Semifinals: France 0, Spain 2; England 1, Argentina 2

Which manager was worse?

(I) Thomas Tuchel, for:

(a) ceasing to attack …

and

(b) permitting Messi & Co. to hammer away at the English goal …

for forty minutes;

OR:

(II) Didier Deschamps, for:

having no response for anything that Spain did.

I vote: Deschamps. This is the second time he has “crashed the Ferrari” in the World Cup. (I’m not considering France’s Euro defeats.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Deschamps almost “crashed the Ferrari” in the 2018 World Cup final. The Croatians were passing through the French at will, and had scored once. But then the referee gave France a second goal.

Deschamps’s tactics with France always have been simple.

(1) He fields three or four prodigious scorers – even if they don’t maintain possession, defend, etc. He values their scoring so much that he requires little else of them.

(2) He overpopulates the defense. He prefers central midfielders and fullbacks who are defensive specialists. (That is putting it kindly; at times, he seems to prefer that they have offensive limitations.)

(3) He ignores transitional midfield play. He figures that as long as (a) his attackers seize on mistakes and put in goals and (b) his defensive multitudes keep goals out, the middle of the field doesn’t matter.

In short, he gambles on offensive talent, which of course France has in spades.

Well, these tendencies bit him in 2022, against Argentina, and again in this tournament, against Spain. The vaunted attackers weren’t outplayed, exactly. Rather, the opposing midfielders cut off their supply. I had expected that Mbappé, Dembélé, et al. should have enough chances provided them. Everyone expected this. Instead, they were starved. Rodri, Ruiz, and Olmo – great players – bossed the middle. But they were aided by Deschamps’s abdication of that zone.

Halfway through, it was clear that France sorely missed the few polyfunctional midfielders employed during Deschamps’s tenure:

• Griezzman, an attacker willing to drop back to defend and to build up play. (Retired.)
• Kanté, ball-winner extraordinaire, known also for jump-starting the attack. (Old; languishing on the bench.)
• Camavinga. (Left at home.)

(Moussa Sissoko was discarded after featuring in the 2016 Euros; Steven Nzonzi was a bit-player in 2018; Manu Koné, in this World Cup, has been an occasional substitute for the not-fully-fit, defensively-minded Tchouaméni. These are versatile players that, at different times, Deschamps has not preferred to use.)

I said, at the beginning of the tournament, that the French could win any match with just twenty good minutes. Spain granted five. By then, for France, it was too late.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Spain’s midfield is tactically and technically superb; but so is Argentina’s. And Argentina has grit, grit, grit. Only the Croatians approximate them. This should be a fascinating final. I’ll bet on Argentina; these Spaniards have yet to meet such willful adversaries. But I wouldn’t mind if Spain won. Both these teams are worthy.

The best World Cup game I’ve seen

Why is Ángel Di María starting in the final game of the World Cup? Has the coach gone sentimental?

Yes, Di María missed the final game in 2014, and yes, he has been a great player, but now he’s past his prime … and he was deadweight in the group stage …

This is what viewers probably thought when the match began. I thought it. Then Di María beat his markers and earned a penalty kick. A few minutes later, he scored from a counterattack. He tormented French defenders down Argentina’s left wing all the first half.

Usually, he plays on the right. It was brilliant of Scaloni to put him on the left. Mbappé, the French prodigy on the opposite corner of the field, doesn’t track back. Ever. Because he’s a spoiled brat. That invited Argentina’s right fullback, Molina, to play freely down that sideline (with help from De Paul, who’d drift outward from the middle). With Molina and De Paul covering the right, Argentina had the luxury of putting an extra player on the opposite wing. And so right-winger Di María was placed on the left.

Old man? Yes, but canny and very skillful.

France’s fullback on that side, Kounté, was overwhelmed. Dembélé, his winger, tried to help him, but defending isn’t his strength. It was Dembélé who fouled Di María. Messi converted the penalty. Then the French again lost track of Di María, and he scored on the counter.

Deschamps, the French manager, had to change his personnel. Out went Dembélé; in came a more defensive right-winger. Out went Giroud, the hardworking central forward. A defensively competent left-winger was brought in, and Mbappé, France’s vaca sagrada, was slotted into Giroud’s place. It wasn’t halftime yet, and the French already had demolished and reconfigured their lineup. Deschamps, a World Cup winner – and a former French team captain – was bowing to Mbappé, whose refusal to track back had gotten the team into this mess.

If soccer always rewarded good play, the Argentinians would have ridden out this match they were controlling. But France has a bottomless supply of talent. The substitutes – Kolo Muani, Thuram, and, later, Coman and Camavinga – changed the game. Ten minutes after the latter pair were introduced, Mbappé scored twice. He scored again, in extra time; but by then Messi had added an insurance goal for Argentina. I say “insurance goal,” not “probable winning goal,” because that’s what it always was. France is talented enough to score without playing well, without doing the right things, and that’s what happened. It was Messi’s goal, though, that virtually guaranteed Argentina’s victory, even though it wasn’t the deathblow (“Dibu” Martínez had to make a crucial save). Argentina never was going to lose the penalty shootout.

Deschamps’s conundrum over what to do with Mbappé was evident before the game. ESPN’s pundits discussed it yesterday:

The pundits suggested that Giroud might be sacrificed so that Mbappé could be given a less defensively crucial function. Sure enough, that’s what happened – eventually.

Earlier in the tournament, Brazil had similar problems accommodating Neymar and Vinícius Júnior.

(Hat tip: David.)

I am so, so happy for Messi, for Di María, for the nation of Argentina, for South America. These are longsuffering people. This was the best game of this World Cup, the best World Cup game I’ve seen; and this was the best World Cup I’ve seen. I’m glad the South Americans won; if they hadn’t, it would have meant four more years of wretchedness.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Update, December 19. Here’s a different analysis according to which it’s not such a tactical disaster for France that Mbappé doesn’t defend.

Argentina’s key to stopping Mbappé was to leave Molina on him and to keep Hernandez, France’s left fullback, from pushing up to cause trouble for Molina. Kounté was unable to drift toward the middle to help the central defenders and midfielders; he had his hands full with Di María. So the middle was relatively unclogged, and Argentina’s midfielders had enough space in which to circulate the ball and retain possession of it. So Hernandez stayed back to defend; he didn’t go up to feed the ball to Mbappé. And, anyway, Mbappé was covered by a dedicated defender (Molina). So, Mbappé hardly touched the ball.

When Kounté did drift toward the middle to help out against Argentina’s midfielders and forwards, Dembélé had to come down to defend that corner of the field, and Di María easily beat him. Di María may be “over the hill,” but he’s still a much craftier attacker than Dembélé is a defender. This is why Di María played on the left in this game instead of on his usual side.

Mbappé’s job is always to capitalize on the other team’s mistakes in France’s attacking third of the field. He’s a glorified goal poacher – just one who begins to operate outside the penalty box. Deschamps likes to start with two goalscorers: Mbappé and Giroud. But when France was overwhelmed in the middle – which doesn’t happen in most games, because the French defensive midfielders are industrious and capable – Deschamps sacrificed the goalscorer with the shorter attacking range (Giroud).

The virtue of this interpretation is that it accounts for why, against Argentina, Hernandez didn’t go up to attack as often as against other teams.

Its shortcoming is that it doesn’t account for why Argentina’s midfielders were so dominant. De Paul, especially, would’ve had less freedom to operate near the right sideline if Mbappé were the sort of player who’d track back.

But Mbappé isn’t that sort of player.

Either way, Deschamps had to decide which sort of striker to use. Since he didn’t expect that his midfielders could work the ball into the box, he sacrificed Giroud, the striker who is less effective outside it. The gamble payed off: Mbappé scored his second goal from a play in which he began to operate from beyond the box.

What it boils down to is that France isn’t the sort of team that tries to control the midfield. It tries to bend without breaking. Then it uses many dedicated attackers – one of whom is a glory hog – to try to capitalize on the other team’s mistakes.

This was how France played in the 2018 World Cup, too.

But yesterday, Argentina’s midfielders were too good. Without attackers who were willing to help defend, France’s midfield was torn to shreds, and its attackers hardly touched the ball.

I can’t but wonder if Deschamps would have bound France to this ugly strategy had Benzema been fit. Benzema is a more collaborative player than Mbappé, and he’s a big enough star to allow a manager to craft a strategy around him instead of around Mbappé. Then again, Deschamps seems never to have been comfortable managing Benzema, a genuinely authoritative player. He’s been more willing to indulge the egotists at his disposal.