This Monday evening, a meeting that has become a classic took place at the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels. While the French team has often gotten into the habit of dominating their Belgian neighbors, this new trend had to be confirmed this Monday. And not without suffering, the Blues achieved it against the dangerous Red Devils. In the first period, Didier Deschamps’ men were put in great difficulty by the constant pressing of their opponents, embodied by the monstrous activity of Loïs Openda.
A complicated first period which gave Didier Deschamps a hard time, who confirmed his team’s difficulties during this first act on TF1 at the end of the match: “we were shaken for 20-25 minutes where they put a lot of intensity while we made a lot of technical errors when we recovered the ball. When we were able to find solutions moving forward, it was better for us. It’s good for us the penalty that they missed even if we shouldn’t take this goal where we line up high. We were on tiptoe. We had fewer turnovers afterwards but we wanted to drive the ball instead of making a simple pass. We did well in the first half.”
France’s strength of character pleased Didier Deschamps
However, despite these difficulties, the French returned to the locker room with a score of 1-1 after Randal Kolo Muani opened the score from the penalty spot which responded to Youri Tielemans’ miss on the same exercise a few minutes earlier. At the end of the first period, Loïs Openda was responsible for resetting the counters. In the second half, the Blues were much more consistent and found more automatisms in the offensive phase. And in a well-executed action, Randal Kolo Muani headed Lucas Digne’s cross to deceive Koen Casteels and give the Blues the advantage. After this sublime goal, the score no longer changed and the French defense was united even after the expulsion of Aurélien Tchouaméni (76th).
A victory with character which delighted Didier Deschamps at the end of the meeting. Thanks to his half-time speech, the coach helped instill an aggressive spirit into a group that he describes as young: “we had to shake them up without shaking everyone. Compared to what we said, and what the players had said. But these are mostly mistakes, we had to calm down. We had to go forward and press hard. Of course, they had chances, but so did we in the second half. We are perhaps happy to win this match, perhaps with forceps and ten men. We did better even if it wasn’t difficult in the second half. It’s a young team that doesn’t have much experience. There was seriousness and enthusiasm at this gathering. It’s better to win these kinds of matches. In the group, we leave them at four points and that’s good.»
