Euro 2016: How good can France and Dimitri Payet be?
Tougher tests lie ahead for Didier Deschamps' side and they cannot always rely on their magician
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Your support makes all the difference.Didier Deschamps put it best late on Friday night, reflecting on how Dimitri Payet’s brilliant last-minute winner had bailed out a nervous French opening performance. “Football is easy when you can bang it into the top corner,” he said. “It solves a lot of problems.”
That is precisely what Payet did for Deschamps and France, putting them on top of Group A, a position that they hope to hold. But Deschamps must know that a 25-yard winning goal is not something that he can count on for the rest of the tournament.
France’s games will only get harder from here. Albania, who they face on Wednesday, are technically better than Romania, while their third opponents Switzerland will be their main rivals for first place. What they need then is a more permanent solution to their problems, a way to make sure that they find more fluency and spark as the tournament progresses.
Of course, it might be that their opening day misfiring was simply nerves. This team has to cope with an awful lot of pressure and they were certainly slow to grow into the game after an emotional opening ceremony. “It was a difficult match, we had a tricky first 20 minutes,” Deschamps said. “We were too timid, but we did what we had to do.”
But that does not feel like the whole story. France’s struggles lasted for longer than 20 minutes. They looked to be at least as tactical as they were emotional. Because for all the talent representing Les Bleus, they struggled to get the most out of each other. Deschamps’ 4-3-3 system was an effective way of getting his best players on the pitch at the same time, but it left his side too narrow and too predictable.
When France were playing the 4-3-3, Payet was their only player who realised that most of the space on the pitch was out wide. Neither Patrice Evra nor Bacary Sagna is as fast as he used to be and the flanks were too often left empty. Deschamps switched to a 4-2-3-1 with Kingsley Coman and Anthony Martial out wide, with Payet at number 10, and the team looked more balanced. Even with Paul Pogba and Antoine Griezmann, his two top players, bravely hauled off.
It is implausible that Deschamps will start in Saint Etienne on Wednesday night with that team, with neither Pogba nor Griezmann on the pitch. But what he does have to ask himself is whether Payet is his player on best form – he surely is – and what this means for the formation next time. It felt remarkable, in the immediate aftermath of Payet’s goal on Friday, to remember that he had been the last name on the team-sheet, winning a selection battle with Martial, an exceptional talent but not the same type of player.
The reaction of the French press on Friday was to point to Payet’s elevated role in the side, and to wonder what that means for the rest of the team. “Payet is no longer there to win his place but to make the team win. He no longer plays for himself but for them,” wrote Regis Testelin in Saturday’s L’Equipe. “He is the leader of play of the French team and it is not a risk if he stays on the pitch while Antoine Griezmann and Paul Pogba leave it. That was the logic of his match, but also of theirs.”
Those who know Payet have always said that he needs to feel loved to produce his best football. Patrice Evra, the most experienced player on this France team, said after the game that he had a responsibility to make Payet believe in himself, to grow into his role as the lead player for a team which is itself trying to make itself believe.
“We all know that Payet has quality,” Evra said. “Now he has gone to the next level with his personality and his character. To have the personality to be strong and take responsibility, you have to do things like that.”
“I have told him, if you want me to, I will say every day 'you are the best player, you are everything'. But if he does that every time I will go in his room every morning and tell him he's the best player.” For now few would disagree with him.
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