Didier Deschamps on the brilliance of Doue and Yamal – and why he can’t ‘copy and paste’ PSG’s success
Didier Deschamps had a hard enough job as it was fitting all the extravagantly gifted attacking players at his disposal into France’s starting XI. Then Desire Doue came along.During the most recent international break, in March, Deschamps found himself grappling with the three-sided conundrum of how to grant his captain, Kylian Mbappe, the attacking freedom he desires, how to somehow harness Ousmane Dembele’s remarkable form as a false nine with Paris Saint-Germain, and how to devise a system that would enable Michael Olise to fully express himself in a France shirt for the first time.AdvertisementThe two legs of France’s Nations League quarter-final win over Croatia yielded only partial success on those fronts. The deployment of Dembele in a free central role in the first leg, a 2-0 defeat in Split, proved underwhelming, while Mbappe extended his run of international appearances […]
