The French team wanted to end this October international break on another good note this Tuesday evening, after perfectly overthrowing the Netherlands last week (1-2). For this friendly match against Scotland, on the lawn of the Pierre Mauroy stadium in Lille, coach Didier Deschamps had somewhat modified his system to 4-3-3, notably with a new central hinge composed of Ibrahima Konaté and Benjamin Pavard, the tenure of Eduardo Camavinga in midfield and the returns of Ousmane Dembélé and Olivier Giroud in attack. The organizers of the match therefore decided to slightly postpone the match by 10 minutes to allow all the spectators to take their seats. Following last night’s terrorist attack in Brussels, pat-downs took longer and security required more attention than usual. During the first period, the Blues were quickly surprised by the opener from Billy Gilmour (1-0, 11th), helped by a huge loss of ball on a failed restart from Eduardo Camavinga. But Didier Deschamps’ players reacted well by quickly equalizing from a corner: Antoine Griezmann placed the ball on the head of Benjamin Pavard at the near post (1-1, 16th). The Inter Milan defender even scored a double later on a pass from Kylian Mbappé (2-1, 24th).
Shortly before the break, the captain of the Blues converted a penalty caused by Olivier Giroud (3-1, 41st) to triple the lead. In the second act, the French team played with a little more caution to avoid serious physical problems and the Blues staff quickly made several tactical changes to open up their bench: the entries into play of Kingsley Coman and Marcus Thuram brought a little dynamism to this somewhat amorphous second half. Moreover, it was the Bayern Munich player who came to score the fourth goal of the match for the Blues (4-1, 70th), thus offering himself a first achievement with the selection since 2020. It is therefore with a certain domination and solid control of the pace of the match that France largely won this Tuesday evening against the Tartan Army (4-1). Full success for the Blues in this international break with a capital success against the Netherlands, officially validating their qualifying ticket for Euro 2024, and a reassuring friendly victory against Scotland.
