EXCLUSIVE | Jérémie Aliadière: ‘It’s not the end but the beginning of a beautiful story for the French team’ | OneFootball

Get French Football News sat down with former Arsenal and France youth international striker Jérémie Aliadière to look back on les Bleus‘ World Cup semi-final defeat and to discuss the future of the France team and its players.

In this first part, he spoke about what went wrong against Spain and explains why the future is still bright.

What on earth happened on Tuesday night [France’s 2-0 semi-final defeat to Spain]?

There are plenty of things for me, things I’ve heard and things I’ve been following with which I quite agree. I think it’s true that all the way through the tournament, this whole World Cup, the French team has been very good but never really played against a team of the level of Spain or even Argentina, a truly great nation. Even Morocco, whom I thought were really a very good team, they didn’t really believe they could win, so they didn’t play, they were afraid of France and they wanted to defend.

Then we came across Spain, we know what they can do, they’re a team that knows their game and I think there lies the answer. All these easy games we had where we managed to dominate, to score goals, it was maybe too easy and the difference between playing these matches and suddenly having Spain – we didn’t know how to raise our level of play and perform in that moment.

I also think that there are a lot of individual players who weren’t good on the day. When you have a team of 11 players and you have maybe three out of 11 who are not having a good day, you still have eight that are good, you can still find a way. But when, out of all your attacking players, there wasn’t a single one who was able to really do something, you have the impression that all these players were not on a good day. And it’s difficult when you have seven of your 11 players who are having a bad day and are not at their best.

I also think that football at this level, it turns on details that are so small. And I think that if we replay the match and Lucas Digne doesn’t commit this foul in the box and we don’t concede this penalty, I’m sure we can win the match. I’m sure we can win it. But I think the psychological effect of conceding that penalty and going 1-0 down at that moment – it killed us. We started to panic a little and say “Oh my god, we absolutely have to score quickly”. And you felt Kylian Mbappé being like “give me the ball, I absolutely have to score”. Michael Olise wasn’t able to pull things off, the same for Ousmane Dembélé. These players whom I’d watched play so well together throughout the World Cup suddenly became a little individualistic because there was this rush to have to equalise quickly and they all wanted to try to take their responsibility and try to score but it didn’t work.

And when you give a gift like that to the opposition – because it was a gift, even though Digne doesn’t see the player, he makes a mistake, it happens to everyone – that’s not the problem – the problem is that if you give a gift to a team like Spain, you go 1-0 down like that, it’s very, very complicated to try to come back.

Then there were the substitutions, when Adrien Rabiot came off at half-time and I understand totally the choice of Didier Deschamps because here Rabiot was on a booking and he was afraid that he would receive a second. But I think we felt the loss of Rabiot in midfield right away. I felt that in the middle there was no one left, that there was no more balance in the team, that there were five up front, there was the defence and there was a hole in the middle and we could see Spain taking advantage of it, playing between the lines. So yes, it was hard to watch.

I wondered if there was also a question of a little lack of experience from the younger players. For example with Olise, I think you could see in his face that the occasion had got to him, even if he has played big European matches with Bayern Munich?

That’s right. Yes, that’s right. It’s true that it’s all very well playing big Champions League matches, Champions League finals in the case of Dembélé for example. But [World Cup semi-finals] these are huge matches. And then it’s Spain. I recently heard someone say, and I had never really thought about it but completely agreed, but in Spain, whether you play in the under-8 category, under-15, under-16, the first team, it’s always the same football everywhere. In Spain, they educate their young people in the same way to play the same type of football. And I think that it shows. It shows. You play against Spain at any level, at any age, you know how they’re going to play and I think they’ve succeeded in creating something as a country that is an example to follow. Because it’s true that when you look at the individual players of France and Spain on paper, for me France has better players than the Spanish team. But the Spanish team plays as a team all the time at any level with any player, it’s always the same thing and it works all the time.

So maybe there is a lesson to learn, that it may well be a model, to try to educate all our generations in the same way, to be able to deliver afterwards at the highest level what Spain is doing.

Let’s look at the future. This is still a young team. Do you feel like this is the end of a cycle or the beginning of something?

No, I think it’s the beginning of something. I think there are so many players as well who didn’t receive much of an opportunity – when I think of players like Rayan Cherki who didn’t play much but who in four years’ time will be extraordinary, I think. Players like Désiré Doué, Bradley Barcola who are already in the team, who are very young, Hugo Ekitike who was injured, who will be there. So it’s a very, very young team. So I think that Didier Deschamps has really created something and he is now leaving with his head held high. He’s not leaving saying I’ve taken everything. He can say I’m leaving and I’m leaving behind for Zinedine Zidane a huge pool of talent. He’s leaving behind a team capable of winning first the next Euro and then the next World Cup.

So for me it’s not the end, but the beginning of a beautiful story for the French team.

Jérémie Aliadière was speaking exclusively to Get French Football News courtesy of ToonieBet

GFFN | Jeremy Smith