The inside story of France’s World Cup: Why did the favourites fall short?

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France manager Didier Deschamps and his assistant Guy Stephan called it “oxygenation”. After defeat in the 2022 World Cup final, it was time to refresh a squad that lifted the trophy in Russia in 2018 but came up short against Argentina four years later.

World Cup veterans Hugo Lloris, Raphael Varane, Antoine Griezmann and Olivier Giroud brought down the curtain on their international prominence. In their place, a group of young, extraordinarily talented players arrived: William Saliba, Michael Olise, Desire Doue, Bradley Barcola and Rayan Cherki came in to supplement already established headline acts including Kylian Mbappe and Ousmane Dembele.

This talent pool, combined with France’s record at the previous two World Cups, created clear expectations: Deschamps’ team entered this tournament in North America as many people’s favourites to win it. That was not only fans, or media; the former France World Cup winner Patrick Vieira said as much repeatedly on UK broadcaster ITV.

The group phase and early knockout rounds only enhanced this notion. France were the joint-highest scorers in at that point, securing maximum points from games against Senegal, Iraq and Norway, and then breezed past Sweden, Paraguay and Morocco to reach the semi-finals without conceding a knockout goal. Mbappe, with eight goals, was — and still is — the tournament’s top scorer alongside Lionel Messi.

Then came the Dallas afternoon which stunned the world: France were not only beaten but resoundingly so by an outstanding Spain performance. In the aftermath, the French newspaper L’Equipe claimed barely a word was spoken in the immediate aftermath in the dressing room. The newspaper described a stunned silence, save for a short speech by Deschamps in which he told his players to try to contextualise their defeat and not forget how well they had played for much of the tournament.

For Deschamps, this is the end of the road, his team exiting with an unforeseen whimper at the culmination of his 14 years in power. His likely successor, the soon-to-be-anointed Zinedine Zidane, is arguably the most famous French footballer of all time.

In an interview with The Athletic in March, Deschamps’ assistant Guy Stephan said: “People like change and Zizou is very well-known.” When a media assistant grinned, Stephan laughed, saying the president of the federation Philippe Diallo had all but hinted at Zidane’s appointment in previous days. In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, Diallo had said he already knew the name of Deschamps’ successor, having spoken to five French candidates, and was described as having smiled when asked if it would be Zidane.

For Deschamps and Stephan, there was no shortage of blame after Spain’s Luis de la Fuente outwitted the French coaching staff for the third time during his tenure. A three-man midfield of Fabian Ruiz, Rodri and Dani Olmo bamboozled them, whose gaps between the lines were frequently exposed. For Deschamps, there was some mitigation. He lost Saliba, France’s best defender, in the first half of the game to a back injury. Arsenal’s Saliba had been playing through the pain, missing at least one training session prior to the semi-final and following a managed training schedule.

“I’ve had some minor niggles for several months,” Saliba said before the group-stage match against Iraq. “I’ve been gritting my teeth because there was the Champions League and the Premier League. But the coaching staff are handling it very well.

“The World Cup comes round only once every four years, so you’ve got to grit your teeth. I’m not at 100 per cent but there are plenty of players who aren’t at 100 per cent either — you can’t make excuses.”

A breaking point came 29 minutes into the game against Spain, Saliba going down in an innocuous moment with the ball at his feet. He lowered himself to the turf, kicked it out of play and called for medical attention. He will not play in the third-place play-off against England in Miami this weekend and Arsenal fans will anxiously await a full prognosis.

Deschamps’ problems on the day came throughout the spine of his team. His stretched midfield forced Adrien Rabiot, who had played every minute of the competition (except for a rotated team in a group game against Norway), into two poor challenges, meaning he was already booked and at risk of a second yellow card. France therefore entered the second half without Deschamps’ most trusted centre-back and first-choice central midfielder. Michael Olise, the creative hub of the French team, was dominated by Rodri to the extent he was withdrawn after 72 minutes. Mbappe and Olise exchanged a pass only once against Spain compared to 66 times across their first six matches of the tournament. Dembele, the Ballon d’Or winner, was peripheral.

It was the ultimate vindication of the Spanish game plan but also represented a piecemeal demolition of Deschamps’ approach. He wanted his players to go man-for-man to combat Spain’s style but their opponents played around them at will. “There was a lack of communication in our pressing,” Mbappe said, diagnosing that his team had messed up in their execution of the plan.

A member of the French coaching staff described the France display to L’Equipe as a “non-performance”.

Deschamps has rarely been seen, at least from the outside, as a highly proactive tactician. For much of his reign, he has prioritised caution in his play, even at times accused by the French media of adopting a boring approach. In this tournament, he appeared to give players greater freedom, only for Spain to then remind everyone why Deschamps was attracted to the handbrake in the first place.

His strengths lie more in his man-management, a little like Brazil’s Carlo Ancelotti, prioritising the environment of the squad over the course of a long tournament. During his reign, he favoured those players who can live together and tolerate a high-pressure, high-emotion zone for up to seven weeks including the pre-tournament training camps.

His players clearly bonded with him. Deschamps missed the final group game against Norway following the passing of his mother and, when Mbappe scored against Sweden upon Deschamps’ return, he immediately ran to the coach to embrace him. Rabiot said of Deschamps: “He smiled a lot. He tried to be enthusiastic, although I know that he’s very affected by his grief. I think he’s trying not to show it, not to transmit any negativity to the squad.” The French players wanted to wear black armbands as a mark of respect in their game against Norway, only for FIFA to block the request.

Stephan told The Athletic of the head coach: “You need to detect everyone’s qualities, bring people together, be a good psychologist, strategist, and someone who obviously takes responsibility for results, good or bad… Didier transmits serenity to the group. He’s focused but he’s not uptight in his language. He’s not a stressed person. That’s one of the reasons for his success, too.”

For France, the vibes had been strong. There was no inclination of the infighting that has blighted the national team at previous tournaments, most famously in 2010 or at Euro 2020, when their elimination was followed by an exchange of views between Rabiot’s mother and Mbappe’s father after a penalty shootout defeat against Switzerland. In the typical post-tournament finger-pointing, some players complained about the quality of the team’s hotels and a lack of social opportunities.

This time, France’s players had no such issues. Prior to the World Cup, the French president Emmanuel Macron came to dine with the players at their training complex. Once in the U.S., they committed to the Four Seasons hotel in the centre of Boston.

The players’ hotel suites were generously decorated. Each one had a poster of themselves wearing the France jersey outside their bedroom door. Inside, they were greeted by red, white and blue balloons and a gaming card image of themselves with their name, date of birth, height and weight, as well as a certificate of participation from the federation.

Their Boston hosts provided complimentary jerseys from local sports teams, the NFL’s New England Patriots, the NBA’s Boston Celtics and MLB’s Boston Red Sox. Each player had a dressing gown with the French badge and a squad number on the back. The atmosphere appeared light. There was a visit from Paul Pogba, the 2018 World Cup winner, who kept popping up at games as a guest of FIFA. A birthday cake was wheeled in for Jean-Philippe Mateta, the Crystal Palace forward who turned 29 in late June.

🤩🇫🇷 The mood in the French camp is excellent!

Les Bleus celebrated Jean-Philippe Mateta’s birthday in style, turning the occasion into complete chaos with plenty of laughs, celebrations, and team spirit. 😭🥳🎂 pic.twitter.com/df8zMKJtx5

— Futball Centa (@futballcenta) June 29, 2026

Unlike other teams in the competition, France did not endure brutal travel demands. There was no zigzagging across the continent, traversing of borders or altitude concerns. They existed largely in the north-eastern corridor of the United States, playing twice near Boston, twice in New Jersey and twice in Philadelphia before the semi-final finally took them further afield to Dallas.

They did have some brutally hot afternoons in those outdoor stadiums, most notably the furnace of Philadelphia against Paraguay in the round of 16, a game in which the South Americans, in Deschamps’ words, used “every trick in the book” to unsettle France. The game ended so tetchily that Deschamps dispatched his two “burliest lads” from the bench to protect Mbappe at the end of the game in an attempt to avoid his star man becoming embroiled in altercations which could have drawn disciplinary action.

“We showed that we are not only a team who plays flashy attacking football,” Mbappe said afterwards. “If we have to put our hands in the s–t, we will put our hands in the s–t.”

He added: “They thought we’d show up in tuxedos, make some fancy moves, but football’s not just that. We did it today.”

Deschamps was by now gushing over Mbappe, arguably the form player of the tournament. “You guys make Kylian seem like a dictator,” said Deschamps, referring to social media presumptions and memes about Mbappe’s off-field power and persona. “The reality is the opposite. His public image does not reflect reality at all. Kylian has always been mature and the whole team follows him. I am so happy to have Kylian as captain.”

France’s challenges came from external provocation, first the petulance of the Paraguayan team, but then comments widely condemned as racist by a Paraguayan politician. The Paraguayan senator Celeste Amarilla called Mbappe a “colonised Cameroonian, desperately trying to pass himself off as French”, labelling him “resentful, arrogant and ugly”. Mbappe called the comments “despicable and racist”, for which Amarilla requested an apology, only for Paraguay’s own government to say it “deplores and rejects” her remarks, which also brought condemnation from his club Real Madrid and FIFA president Gianni Infantino.

The former Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy was then accused of racism before the semi-final by several leading French politicians after saying the France national team “does not have any French players”. Rajoy, who served as leader of the Spanish government between 2011 and 2018, made the comment in a column for Spanish outlet El Debate.

This led the French embassy in Madrid to write: “Without wanting to get into a controversy, it is worth recalling the facts: all the players on the French national team are French. Of the 26 players, 23 were born in France. The three who were born abroad are French too.”

Diallo, the president of the French Football Federation, said: “Mariano Rajoy’s remarks evoking the French team carry intolerable whiffs of racism and raise questions about the detestable climate that generates such foul odours.”

For Mbappe, such comments can never be normalised, but his profile is such that he is now sadly accustomed to off-field controversies clouding his big-match preparation. He had come off a peculiar season at Real Madrid, where he appeared unloved, even in a campaign in which he has scored 56 goals for club and country. He, too, was carrying a minor knock into the game against Spain, having departed the 2-0 win over Morocco with an ankle injury, before training separately from the group.

In the end, what could go wrong against Spain, did go wrong. Spain played their own part, outstanding on the day, but for France, injuries, yellow cards, under-performance and tactical naivety conspired to produce one of the most underwhelming performances in recent World Cup memory by a tournament favourite.

France, trailing for the first time at this World Cup, appeared stunned to discover adversity, summoning a shot on target for the first time in the 82nd minute. “Maybe when it’s too easy, we think we’re above the rabble,” said Cherki, hinting at some complacency in the French ranks.

The good news for Zidane, a three-time Champions League-winning coach with Real Madrid, is that he is set to inherit a set of talent largely in its prime or still emerging. That means the expectations will not change. He will be expected to repeat Deschamps’ original trick; to win the World Cup as a coach — just as he did as a player.