France predicted XI v Germany: Rayan Cherki to start, Ibrahima Konaté dropped
France take on Germany this Sunday at 3pm CET in Stuttgart for the UEFA Nations League third-place playoff. Both Les Bleus and Die Mannschaft want to finish on a high after respectively losing to Spain and Portugal. France manager Didier Deschamps has many injuries to deal with. PSG strikers Ousmane Dembélé and Bradley Barcola have pulled out of the squad, whereas centre-back Clément Lenglet is also out.
With so few players available, Deschamps is expected to field an experimental defense again in front of Mike Maignan. Liverpool centre-back Ibrahima Konaté trained on his own yesterday, so it will be a surprise to see him starting. Pierre Kalulu, who had a nightmare debut outing against La Roja, is not expected to start either. In these conditions, Sevilla's Loïc Badé and PSG's Lucas Hernandez should compose France's duo at the back. On the flanks, Chelsea's Malo Gusto will start opposite Aston Villa's Lucas Digne.
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Fortunately for Deschamps, Real Madrid midfielder Aurélien Tchouaméni is available for selection. According to L'Equipe, the former Monaco man will start alongside Marseille's Adrien Rabiot in a double pivot. Further up the field, Rayan Cherki is set to be given his first senior start in a No. 10 role after a brilliant cameo off the bench against Spain.
Up front, Deschamps is set to stick with Real Madrid's Kylian Mbappé as a centre-forward. On the wings, the France manager is set to field two centre-forwards in Inter's Marcus Thuram and Juventus' Randal Kolo Muani, which leaves Désiré Doué and Michael Olise as back-ups.
France likely line-up v Germany
Mike Maignan; Malo Gusto, Loïc Badé, Lucas Hernandez, Lucas Digne; Aurélien Tchouaméni, Rayan Cherki, Adrien Rabiot; Randal Kolo Muani, Kylian Mbappé, Marcus Thuram. (L'Éq)
GFFN | Bastien Cheval
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He rallied from two sets down for the first time in his career, doggedly saved three championship points, and defended the French Open title he'd won in Paris a year ago. The 4-6, 6-7(4), 6-4, 7-6(3), 7-6(2) victory means that Alcaraz, still only 22, is a five-time major champion. The only active man ahead of him on the all-time list is 24-time Grand Slam winner Novak Djokovic. More than once on Sunday, Alcaraz had seemed destined for a trademark Sinner dissection. With surgical precision, the Italian had punished him with a break in the first set and held his nerve through a tiebreak in the second. But the longer the match dragged on, the looser Alcaraz became. He took risks, invented new angles, ran down every ball. 'Most of the time,' Alcaraz had said before the match, 'it's just about suffering.' It wasn't quite the longest Grand Slam final in tennis history—that still belongs to Djokovic's 5-hour, 53-minute win over Rafa Nadal in Australia in 2012—but it was every bit as grueling. Two years ago, Alcaraz's body had gone to pieces in a semifinal here against Djokovic as full-body cramping caused him to withdraw in the third set. The physical breakdown had been due to stress, he said at the time. He vowed to work on his stamina and his mentality to make sure it never happened again. So as Sunday's comeback began to materialize, and as Sinner's cool precision began to desert him, Alcaraz was prepared. There had been a few longer contests in his young career—including a 5-hour, 15-minute epic against Sinner at the 2022 U.S. Open—but never anything like this, on the most physically punishing surface in tennis. Professionals love to repeat it: There are no free points on clay. Serves are dampened, rallies are longer, and, as the temperature cools, the ball turns into a kettlebell. Alcaraz, who was practically born on this surface, never wavered. Over the third and fourth sets, he hit 27 winners to Sinner's 16 and cut down on his unforced errors—he had committed 37 in the first two sets alone. That's also when Sinner's serve fell apart. Against any other opponent, Sinner attempting to close out the match at 5-3 would have been one of the surest bets in tennis. But with the crowd firmly on his side, Alcaraz had nothing left to lose. He won 13 of the next 14 points to take a 6-5 lead, before tying the match at two sets apiece in a tiebreak. The fans felt the shift in momentum. They marked it by chanting, 'Sí, se puede.' To Sinner, the scenario wasn't entirely unfamiliar. He had been on the other end of a five-set comeback in a major final before. Just last year, he was the one who fought his way out of a 2-0 hole against Daniil Medvedev to win the Australian Open. But that match wasn't nearly as long—and Medvedev didn't have Alcaraz's endurance. In contests that lasted over four hours, Sinner was 0-5 before Sunday. Sinner's run to the final had made it easy to forget that this has also been the most turbulent season of his young career. Shortly after the Australian Open, he agreed to serve a three-month ban for twice testing positive for a banned anabolic steroid in 2024. Sinner always insisted that the trace amount of clostebol had entered his system accidentally, but understood that he was ultimately responsible for what was in his body. The negotiated settlement also meant that he could accept the punishment without missing a Grand Slam. In May, he reached the final of the Italian Open, which he lost to Alcaraz. And by the time he arrived in Paris, he'd rediscovered his rhythm. 'He's very physical. He's very fit, and he's striking the ball incredibly well,' said Novak Djokovic after losing to Sinner in straight sets in the semifinal. 'Rarely he's off-balance, and he's just playing the tennis of his life.' Alcaraz was always going to be a different type of test. As one of the few men in tennis who is able to live with Sinner's breathless intensity, he pushed him in every rally. The first five games alone took 37 minutes and four of them went to deuce. But at 2-2, Alcaraz managed to break Sinner's serve, something that only Djokovic had managed over Sinner's previous five matches here. Sinner reacted right away and broke back immediately. After 43 minutes of this epic, they were only halfway through the first set. More than four hours later, Sinner and Alcaraz were still locked in the longest final in French Open history. And after the storm, Sinner showed signs of life late in the fifth to push the match into yet another tiebreak. But when it ended, after Alcaraz's 70th winner of the day, only the Spaniard was holding the trophy. Write to Joshua Robinson at
