Didier Deschamps on the brilliance of Doue and Yamal – and why he can't ‘copy and paste' PSG's success

New York Times

3 days ago

Didier Deschamps had a hard enough job as it was fitting all the extravagantly gifted attacking players at his disposal into France's starting XI.
Then Desire Doue came along.
During the most recent international break, in March, Deschamps found himself grappling with the three-sided conundrum of how to grant his captain, Kylian Mbappe, the attacking freedom he desires, how to somehow harness Ousmane Dembele's remarkable form as a false nine with Paris Saint-Germain, and how to devise a system that would enable Michael Olise to fully express himself in a France shirt for the first time.
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The two legs of France's Nations League quarter-final win over Croatia yielded only partial success on those fronts. The deployment of Dembele in a free central role in the first leg, a 2-0 defeat in Split, proved underwhelming, while Mbappe extended his run of international appearances without scoring to seven over the two matches. But Olise shone at No 10 in the return leg, opening his France account with a sumptuous free kick at the Stade de France that paved the way for a jubilantly celebrated penalty-shootout success.
Doue successfully netted his spot kick after coming on as a 66th-minute substitute, but that was all before his man-of-the-match display in PSG's historic 5-0 demolition of Inter in the Champions League final. Having torn the Inter defence to shreds in Munich, becoming the first player to have produced three goal contributions in a final in the Champions League era, when he reported for France duty at Clairefontaine on Monday evening, it was with a status that had been spectacularly enhanced.
There will be clamour now for Deschamps to find a way to include Mbappe and Dembele and Olise and Doue in his starting XI. But for the time being, he is simply pleased to be able to call upon a dazzlingly talented young player who showed at the Allianz Arena that he is already in the thrilling first flush of full sporting maturity.
'I wasn't surprised,' Deschamps tells The Athletic. 'He went from Rennes, where he was doing good things, to PSG, where there were various steps to take and he took them all.
'I brought him into the France squad. I knew he had the potential and I've obviously picked up information on his personality and things like that. Being capable of doing that at his age in a Champions League final… Bravo. And it means he'll turn up with a big smile on his face!'
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Invited to pinpoint Doue's most impressive qualities, Deschamps makes a point of mentioning the dedication and level-headedness that have impressed the winger's coaches right from the earliest days of his career in the academy at Rennes.
'He has the ability to beat people,' the France coach says. 'He has the ability to cover a lot of ground, which isn't always the case (for players with his profile). That's why he's able to play in attack and in midfield.
'And he's young. He turns 20 on Tuesday (June 3). Things haven't happened by accident for him. Everything has been planned and mapped out. And you need that. You can't do without it at a big club.
'He does everything he needs to, but he doesn't rest on his laurels. He's made a very good start. Now it's up to him to sustain it over time.'
Doue's emergence also means there are now two DDs in the France setup. 'That's why I picked him!' jokes the other one.
Deschamps is sitting in a light and airy meeting room on the first floor of Clairefontaine's training and conference centre, a modern four-storey building of stone, steel and glass that looks down a grassy slope towards the Terrain Michel Platini training pitch. Somewhat incongruously, a gigantic inflatable green obstacle course is being erected on the lawn outside in preparation for a visit from the children of French Football Federation employees.
It is the day after PSG's thrilling dismantling of Inter, but in the tranquil wooded surroundings of France's national football centre, which lies near the town of Rambouillet, 30 miles southwest of central Paris, the riotous celebrations that overtook the French capital the night before could not feel further away.
As coach of the French national team, Deschamps was pleased to see a French club prevail in Europe's biggest club competition for only the second time after his own Marseille side's conquest of the continent in 1993. 'Whether you're a PSG supporter or not, they're a Ligue 1 club,' he says. 'And you can't say that Ligue 1 receives much consideration around the world today.'
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But he is sceptical when it comes to any potential positive consequences for Les Bleus. For all the acclaim that Luis Enrique's side have received for their tactical synchronicity or the aggressiveness of their pressing, Deschamps believes it would be too difficult to replicate elements of the Spaniard's approach with France — not least because, as he points out, the only front line PSG players at his disposal are all forwards.
'I'm not complaining about the players I have, but (Achraf) Hakimi is not French, Marquinhos is not French, (Willian) Pacho is not French, Vitinha is not French, none of the (first-choice) midfielders are French. (Khvicha) Kvaratskhelia is Georgian,' he says.
'You can't copy and paste things, even though what they've done is very good. It works very well and it proves Luis Enrique right. Is it possible (to replicate)? Yes. Is there as much time? No. There's much less time.
'If you have seven or eight players, or an entire midfield, who all play for the same club, so much the better. I'd prefer to have 10 players from two clubs than 10 players from eight clubs. They have an automatic understanding and what they do with their clubs serves the national team, but it's not always the case.
'And even with the players I can pick — if we take the example of Desire Doue and (Bradley) Barcola — they're in competition! Sometimes they play together, but sometimes one starts and the other one comes on. It's difficult to transpose things.
'In a club, you have the whole week and you're playing matches together one after the other. So it's not the same.'
Doue may be the name on everyone's lips this week and Dembele may be the leading French contender for the Ballon d'Or, but Deschamps takes care to make sure his skipper is not overlooked.
Asked during a pool interview with journalists from several European publications if Dembele is a credible candidate for the sport's ultimate individual prize, the France coach replies in the affirmative, but then immediately brings up Mbappe, who he believes has had a 'great season' despite Real Madrid's failure to win a major trophy.
Deschamps pays a generous tribute to Lamine Yamal and identifies the 17-year-old Barcelona winger as the principal threat to French hopes in Thursday's Nations League semi-final against Spain in Stuttgart, yet again his thoughts quickly turn to Mbappe, who came in from the cold during the March international break after six months without playing for his country.
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'Yamal is one of those extraordinary players,' says Deschamps, whose side fell to a 2-1 defeat against a Yamal-inspired Spain in the Euro 2024 semi-finals.
'You only ever get two or three of them at the same time. He does it match after match and he's still young.
'But to take the example of other players, Kylian is older, but at 18, he was doing things like Yamal. They're the fuoriclasse, as the Italians say, the hors categorie players, and they're able to make a mark on football very young with what they do.'
Deschamps, 56, is approaching the final 12 months of his tenure as France coach, having announced in January that he will step down after next year's World Cup following 14 years at the helm.
His tenure has included a World Cup triumph at the 2018 tournament in Russia and victory in the Nations League in 2021, along with runners-up finishes at Euro 2016 on home soil and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. But he has often faced criticism over the stodgy quality of France's football, having notably steered Les Bleus to the semi-finals at last summer's European Championship in Germany without a single one of his players scoring a goal in open play.
Although he tends to dismiss the impact of such criticism upon himself, he reveals that his decision to announce his departure was partly motivated by a desire to prevent his players from being caught in the crossfire.
'Everything that is external, it has no importance and no influence on me,' Deschamps says. 'But I felt that despite the results we'd achieved, there was a media environment that was too negative and it could have had an impact on the players.
'I don't think they deserved that. I don't know if it (his announcement) will help with that — it wasn't the fundamental objective — but that's what we've done.'
Deschamps used France's Nations League group games in the autumn to enact what he has repeatedly described as a 'reoxygenation' of his squad, with Olise, Barcola and Roma midfielder Manu Kone among the young players to have been granted opportunities. They were decisions that he thinks his eventual successor will likely benefit from even more than he will.
'I made choices during the Nations League qualifiers that were definitely detrimental to me, but I felt that it was the moment to give playing time to younger players in order to prepare them,' Deschamps explains.
'After the World Cup, it will no longer concern me, but I consider that it's my duty to prepare for the near future rather than the distant future.'
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Zinedine Zidane, who has been out of work since the end of his second stint as Real Madrid coach in 2021, is widely seen as the overwhelming favourite to succeed Deschamps.
Zidane recently gave his strongest indication to date that he wants the job, telling guests at an event organised by his sponsor, Adidas, last week (as reported by L'Equipe): 'Of course, it's a dream, I can't wait.' But not for the first time, Deschamps stopped short of giving his former Juventus and France colleague a ringing endorsement, saying only that he was 'obviously a natural and legitimate candidate'.
Deschamps is already guaranteed to step away from the France fold as both the longest-serving and the most successful men's national team coach in the country's history. But with a place in Sunday's Nations League final against either Germany or Portugal on the line, and a World Cup qualifying campaign to then begin planning, he bats away talk of what kind of legacy he hopes to leave.
'That's not a motivation for me,' Deschamps says. 'It's never been a motivation. I give everything I have for the France team. I did 11 years as a player and if I go to the end, it'll be 14 years as coach. Twenty-five years of my life, you know.
'I'm tied to the blue, white and red jersey, which is the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me in my life. I'll leave what I leave. Nobody, not even my worst enemies, can take away the results I've had.'