Deschamps open to changes to manage young players in the France squad | OneFootball

The coach of France, Didier Deschamps, admitted in an interview with AFP that he had to learn to adapt to the younger generation of players, instead of imposing his ideas, to avoid becoming an “old fool.” The 56-year-old coach, who won the World Cup as a player in 1998 and as a coach in 2018, has already announced that he will leave his position after the 2026 World Cup, which will mark his 12th year in charge.

During this period, Deschamps has observed an evolution in the behavior and temperament of young players.

“Players are more self-assured, they have more confidence,” he told AFP ahead of the World Cup Qualifiers against Azerbaijan this Friday and Iceland next Monday.

“Before, young players did what we told them and that was it. Now they are more comfortable because they are prepared much earlier, play earlier, and are more mature. Besides, they go abroad much earlier.”

While a few years ago a player might have been satisfied just to be called up to the national team, now young players have higher expectations, and that means the coach must “treat them differently,” said Deschamps.

“It’s like in the business world: a young person arrives and is able to go up to the boss and say he wants his job,” he said. “This is something that can be seen as a lack of humility or as ambition,” he added.

“I’d rather be listened to”

Although Didier Deschamps believes that “some things were better before,” he acknowledged that “they may no longer work,” such as, for example, banning cell phones in the locker room.

“The current generation of players is ultra-connected: they are born with a cell phone,” he added. That’s why, “the key is to adapt to them,” says Deschamps.

The coach also stated that the attention span of younger players is “a bit limited” and, for that reason, he needs to adapt his way of coaching them.

“I prefer to be brief and concise,” because “I don’t want to become background noise, I’d rather be listened to,” he says. “When you adapt to increasingly younger players (…) you walk the line between not being an old fool and not being a fake youngster.”

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.