Special Envoy to Faro
FAVORITES
Three matches, three victories and a perfectly consolidated leading position in the Group B standings. This is probably the only thing to remember from this uninteresting match Friday night against Gibraltar (0-3). With nine points, the France team is ahead of Greece, victorious over Ireland (2-1) and expected at the Stade de France on Monday evening. Suffice to say that a fourth victory, for the last match of the season, against the men of Gustavo Poyet would allow the Blues to foresee a qualification for Euro 2024. “We are not there yet”, mocks “DD », pragmatic. We will not be far from it anyway if Monday evening the vice-world champions have 12 points on the clock.
In a sometimes very boring match, the Munich player tried to wake up the spectator or viewer with his percussion and his one-on-one facilities. Sometimes facing one or two opponents on his right side, he showed the way to his partners with his offering for Giroud at the start of the game (3rd), before trying to destabilize the Gibraltar bus. If his relationship with Pavard remains perfectible, he came out of this match in Portugal being the fastest and most active striker on the blue side. Not uninteresting in view of the colossal competition in his position with in particular Dembélé or Kolo Muani.
CLAW STRIKES
Fans who expected an orgy of goals against one of the weakest nations in the world will return. In an unbalanced match seen hundreds of times, the France team did the job, nothing more. Even Didier Deschamps agreed that “the score should have been wider” and that he was “a little” irritated by the last quarter of an hour of the first act. Blame it on inaccuracies, clumsiness, and an inability to tell the difference, like Kylian Mbappé, decisive on two of the three French goals, but unable to undermine the Gibraltar bus on a jerk. There are nights where there is not much to remember. Everyone has already forgotten this Gibraltar-France.
Everyone fights with their weapons and the selection of Gibraltar was right not to water the lawn of the Algarve stadium to prevent the Blues from playing on a ground more conducive to fast play. With the heat of this region of southern Portugal, it was enough to take a simple look to realize the deplorable state of the green rectangle. With grass in places completely dry and more and more clods of earth to be seen as the match progressed, the evening playing surface was unworthy of an international match.
If the Blues fill up at the Stade de France, as will be the case on Monday evening against Greece, they must have been surprised to see an almost empty stadium facing them this Friday. Only 3000 spectators, including 1200 French, had made the trip for this match relocated from Gibraltar. In a (dilapidated) 19,000-seat stadium, it’s far too little. The Portuguese public of Faro and the surrounding area did not bother to move for this not sexy poster for a penny. In the country of Cristiano Ronaldo, Mbappé and his partners do not dream.