France national football team — Les Bleus: history, players and honours

Predecessors and early years until 1919

As early as 1893, a Parisian select team played an international match against the London amateur club team Marylebone F.C.; the Parisian eleven was composed mainly of Englishmen living there who played for clubs such as White Rovers and Standard AC, but also Frenchmen from the Club Français, and lost 3-0. Between 1900 and 1904, USFSA teams played five matches against selection teams from Belgium and England, two of which were in the football demonstration competition at the 1900 Summer Olympics on the fringes of the Universal Exhibition in Paris, with Club Français representing the French colours. A club team (the White Rovers) also played against a selection from Germany in December 1898 and lost 7-0; a Parisian city selection managed a 1-2 draw the following day. However, these matches do not count as official internationals. Even if they took place under the auspices of the FFF's predecessors, they are now only regarded as official internationals if they have been played since FIFA's inception.

The very first of these official international matches took place on 1 May 1904 against Belgium in front of 1,500 spectators at the Vivier d'Oie in Brussels and ended in a 3-3 draw. The selection's first home match was their second international on 12 February 1905: 500 spectators at the Parc des Princes saw the hosts beat Switzerland 1-0. Blue jerseys - albeit initially with white vertical stripes - were first worn by the internationals when they faced England in London on 23 March 1908, their eighth official international, and this colour remained the Bleus' trademark to the present day despite a crushing 12-0 defeat. From 1910 onwards, the Gallic cockerel (coq gaulois) also adorned their kit. The January 1914 international against Belgium in Lille was the first home match not to be played in the Paris area.

The performance of the French eleven in those early days suffered from the fact that the selection of national players was subject to several extraneous considerations, including federation proportionality, under which each member federation in the Comité Français Interfédéral was allocated a fixed number of players. And excluded from this until 1913 were the active players from clubs belonging to the federation with the largest membership, the USFSA, which only then joined the CFI and was initially allocated only a single place in the team. Moreover, most of the players were pure amateurs who could not always afford extended absences from their jobs. Finally, there was a certain disdain at the Comité for players who were not from Paris, even though "provincial clubs" from northern France, Normandy and the Mediterranean coast provided several of the most successful club teams of the pre-war period. The team and officials usually met at a Paris railway station to travel to the venue, often on the morning of the match, and there were few training camps and no permanent coach. For all these reasons, there were hardly ever two matches in which the same eleven footballers were called up, so that no well-rehearsed team could come together; Jean Rigal was the first Frenchman to make ten appearances in 1911. Among the more common 'greats' in blue kit at the time were Pierre Allemane, Gaston Barreau, Fernand Canelle, Jean-Baptiste Ducret, Lucien Gamblin, Gabriel Hanot, Eugène Maës, Louis Mesnier and goalkeeper Pierre Chayriguès.

France did not play a single international match between May 1914 and March 1919, although numerous matches were played between French, British and Belgian military teams during and immediately after the war. In total, there were 37 official international matches up to the formation of the FFF, of which France won 11, drew five and conceded 21, with an overall goal difference of 61-165. Apart from Belgium (12) and Switzerland (6), the Équipe tricolore played England (6, always an amateur side), Italy (5), Luxembourg (3), Denmark, Hungary (2 each) and the Netherlands (1). Against the Danes (0:9 and 1:17 at the 1908 Olympics) and especially against England (0:15, 0:12, 0:11 and 1:10 between 1906 and 1910 - in view of these results the 0:3 of 1911 and the 1:4 of 1913 were already regarded as successes) there were particularly heavy defeats; Denmark was even called the "French nightmare" (cauchemar). The highest victory was an 8-0 win over Luxembourg (1913), but the 4-3 win over Italy in Turin in 1912 is considered the most important success of this period.

Between the World Wars

The Fédération Française de Football Association first introduced fixed structures for the national team and player selection in the year of its foundation (see below). For almost four decades, former international Gaston Barreau in particular was the sélectionneur who decided who could wear the blue kit. For the first time in 1930 - but from then on only at World Cup finals - the association also appointed a coach, and in 1934 Sid Kimpton was the first Englishman to do so. As in many other Central European countries, interest in football in France increased sharply after the World War. This broadening of the social base deep into the working classes was due to the important role played by the sport between the trenches - often together with British soldiers - but also to the slowly improving working conditions, especially in industry.

Although the first international of the period was a 9-4 defeat in Italy and the semi-final loss to Czechoslovakia in the 1920 Olympics was not widely reported in the trade press, the following year 30,000 paying spectators at the Stade Pershing witnessed the Bleus' first early triumph, a 2-1 victory over their 'teachers' England on the centenary of Napoleon's death, although as usual they had only sent their amateur side to the continent. In 1923, the English FA sent their professional side to Paris for the first time in what the hosts saw as a "sign of growing respect", and the encounter ended in a 4-1 defeat for France.

Stade Bordeaux UC's René Petit was the first player not from one of the early footballing strongholds to feature in 1920. From the mid-1920s onwards, players who had grown up in France's North African possessions, such as Alexandre Villaplane, Joseph Alcazar and Mario Zatelli, were increasingly included. Raoul Diagne was the first dark-skinned footballer to achieve international honours for France in 1931, followed by Abdelkader Ben Bouali in 1937 and Larbi Ben Barek in 1938, a 'black pearl' (perle noire) on a par with Uruguay's José Leandro Andrade and Brazil's Leônidas da Silva. The second half of the 1930s also saw an increase in the number of naturalised players - 21 in total by 1939 alone - mainly Austrians and Hungarians such as "Gusti" Jordan, Rudi Hiden and Edmund Weiskopf, but also other Central Europeans and South Americans, e.g. Héctor Cazenave, as well as Spaniards who had fled the civil war. Since that time at the latest, "the national team has reflected the history of French immigration".

The range of opponents also expanded: by the mid-1920s, Spain, Ireland, Norway and Latvia had been added to the list of opponents from all corners of the continent, along with Austria, probably the strongest European team, and Uruguay, the first non-European team, at the 1924 Olympic football tournament. 1928 was the last time the senior team represented France at the Summer Olympics, after which it was replaced by the amateur team following the introduction of professionalism (1932).

In 1930, France were one of only four European participants to make the long and expensive journey by sea to South America to take part in the first World Cup; after the final round matches against Mexico, Argentina and Chile, the French players continued on from Montevideo to Rio de Janeiro to take on Brazil, for whom Arthur Friedenreich scored the final 3-2, while the first footballer to score a World Cup goal, Lucien Laurent of CA Paris, came away empty-handed this time.

However, despite some political rapprochement, relations between the two neighbours remained difficult ("hereditary enmity") and it would take until 1931 before the Bleus had their first friendly encounter with the German side. This 103rd official international match between the French, which was decided in favour of the hosts by an own goal from Reinhold Münzenberg, was watched by a good 40,000 spectators at the Stade Olympique Yves-du-Manoir in Colombes. Three more encounters followed until 1937, two of them in Germany.

In 1938, France organised the 3rd World Cup finals, but the national team was eliminated by Italy in the quarter-finals. From September 1939, the outbreak of the Second World War, the German invasion of France (May/June 1940) and the subsequent occupation, as well as dividing the country in two, also paralysed international sporting activities: between January 1940 and December 1944, the Équipe Tricolore played only two international matches against teams from neutral countries (in March 1942 against Switzerland and Spain). Overall, under the aegis of the FFFA from 1920 to 1942, the overall sporting record was only marginally better than in the early years: in 122 international matches, 38 wins were matched by twelve draws and 72 defeats, with a slight upward trend from the 1920s (14/4/36) to the 1930s and early 1940s (24/8/36). There was also only one double-digit defeat, namely in 1927 with 1:13 against Hungary; but the absolute "fear opponent" of this period developed the Czechoslovakians, against whom for the first time at the Olympics in 1920 and then between 1928 and 1936 in a total of seven encounters - five of them in front of a home crowd - with a goal difference of 5:20 was lost seven times.

From the end of the Second World War to the "Golden Generation" of the 1950s

At Christmas 1944, shortly after the liberation of the capital, international play resumed against Belgium, followed by an away match in Switzerland, also before the end of the war. From the 1950/51 season onwards, the national team had a permanent coach, although he continued to be employed full-time by a professional club and the final say on the team line-up lay with Sélectionneur Barreau or his successor Paul Nicolas in cases of doubt. Especially against the English and the Czechoslovakians, who were almost overpowering before the war, the Bleus proved to be equal in this phase. Two successive home victories against the British (1946 and 1955) and two draws even in the 'motherland of football' (1945 and 1951, both 2-2) were achieved, and the team from the ČSR had also lost their terror: from 1946 to 1949, the French won all three games before their opponents turned the tables again at the 1960 European Championship finals. Among the most outstanding players of the first post-war years were those who had already made a name for themselves up to 1939, such as Julien Darui, Alfred Aston, Larbi Ben Barek, Oscar Heisserer and Jules Bigot, but also younger players like Jean Baratte, Ernest Vaast, Émile Bongiorni and René Bihel. Increasingly, these included sons or grandsons of Poles and Italians who had immigrated to the mining regions of northern France and Lorraine. For those national team players who signed for a foreign club - still a very manageable number at the time: Ben Barek, Bongiorni, Marcel Domingo, Louis Hon, Antoine Bonifaci and, only from the second half of the 1950s, Raymond Kopaszewski ("Kopa") and Maryan Wisnieski - this step meant the end, or at least an interruption, of their national team career; in this respect, the FFF was no different from other Western European associations. Conversely, at an international match in Dublin in 1952, the Bleus faced accusations in the Irish press that this was not a French team at all, but "with all their Italians, Hungarians and Poles, a 'foreign legion'".

France played their first friendly matches against the USSR national team in this period of the Cold War in 1955 (2:2 in Moscow) and 1956 (2:1 home victory). International matches between the French and (West) Germans had been played again since 1952, and the French team also proved their worth against the 1954 world champions: in 1952 in front of their own crowd and in October 1954 in Hanover, they both won 3:1, and the third post-war encounter at the 1958 World Cup finals even ended with a 6:3 victory, which ensured third place and thus the French's best placing at an international tournament up to that point. At the World Cup, the French side were considered by international pundits to be on a par with the victorious Brazilians, with director Raymond Kopa their best player and centre-forward Just Fontaine their most prolific goalscorer ever at a World Cup tournament. Two years later, the Bleus also qualified for the first European Championship finals, which were then held in France. By then, however, the so-called "golden generation" (génération dorée), most of whose players were born around 1930 and had played together, at least occasionally, for Stade Reims under national and club coach Albert Batteux, had already passed their peak. Alongside Kopa and Fontaine, this group included players such as Thadée Cisowski, Yvon Douis, Léon Glovacki, Robert Jonquet, Raymond Kaelbel, André Lerond, Jean-Jacques Marcel, Roger Marche, Armand Penverne, Roger Piantoni, goalkeeper François Remetter, André Strappe, Joseph Ujlaki, Jean Vincent and Mustapha Zitouni.

The decade and a half since the end of the war was the first time France had a positive record: Of 104 senior international matches, France won 49, drew 21 and lost only 34. The national team played particularly successfully after the 1954 World Cup finals until immediately before the first European Championship finals in 1960, when it recorded 22 wins to 11 draws and only nine defeats. This period also saw the team win the Military World Cup (Argentina, July 1957), in which a number of conscripted senior players (Cossou, Douis, Ferrier, Fulgenzy, Mekhloufi, Siatka, Szkudlapski, Wendling, Wisnieski) played their part.

However, the 1950s saw the emergence of a new fearsome opponent in the form of Yugoslavia, who had not posed an insurmountable hurdle before the Second World War when the Bleus had been victorious in three of their five matches between 1926 and 1936. From 1949 to 1960, by contrast, there were nine encounters, of which France lost five and won just one. This record becomes even bleaker when only competitive matches are taken into account. In the qualifiers for the 1950 World Cup, the two sides drew 1-1 before the Balkan side won the decider in Florence 3-2 after extra time to eliminate the French. The two sides met in preliminary groups at the 1954 and 1958 World Cups, losing 1-0 and 3-2 respectively, and in the semi-finals of the inaugural 1960 European Championship, the Yugoslavs lost 5-4 in Paris after leading 4-2. Since then, the Yugoslavs have been regarded as the French side's 'black beast' (bête noire) - a term that was used again in 2008 when Serbia relegated France to second place in their qualifying group for South Africa.

Relapse into second class

In the years that followed, the Équipe tricolore once again went through a "valley of tears", also known as the "grey years". Apart from their participation in the 1966 World Cup, they failed to qualify for any of the major tournaments, losing out to Bulgaria (1962 World Cup, 1972 European Championship), Hungary (1964 European Championship, 1972 European Championship), Yugoslavia (1968 European Championship), Sweden (1970 World Cup), the USSR and Ireland (both 1974 World Cup), Belgium and the GDR (both 1976 European Championship) - mainly teams that were not necessarily among the strongest in Europe. On their way to the World Cup in England, the French eliminated fearsome Yugoslavia, but then finished bottom of their preliminary group, losing to the hosts and Uruguay, and only managing to wrest a point from Mexico.

This international weakness was accompanied by a series of structural and personnel changes in French football, which were also reflected in less than sustainable performances by club teams in European Cup competitions. A total of eight national coaches, who had been in sole charge since 1964, looked after the respective selection teams, sometimes for a very short period of time. Thus, attempts to keep up with rapidly advancing international playing systems alternated in quick succession, but the Bleus tended to "run behind" developments. Nor were a few outstanding player personalities such as Robert Herbin, Henri Michel or Georges Bereta enough to form a team around them that could compete at the European top in the long term. And a goal-scoring playmaker like Rachid Mekhloufi, who was named best player of the season three times after his return to Division 1 (1962), was no longer available for France because he had publicly declared his allegiance to the country of his birth since the Algerian war.

The overall balance of this period was correspondingly negative: From mid-1960 to the end of 1975, France won 35 matches, drew 24, but lost 45. Only three stand-out games were mentioned - a positive 3-2 defeat of Brazil in 1963 and a 5-2 win over England in European Championship qualifying, plus a 4-3 win in Argentina in 1971 - while the rest, including a 5-1 defeat of Yugoslavia in 1968, were described in terms such as "tragedy", "slap in the face", "black year" and "back against the wall". Notwithstanding the A eleven's declining performance, the FFF even created a national team for second division players (Équipe de France de Deuxième Division) in 1962; it played half a dozen matches against its Italian counterpart, as well as several games against domestic regional sides, before ceasing play in 1965.

The "glorious four" 1976 to 1986

When Michel Hidalgo, a player who had been part of the 'golden generation', took over as coach in 1976, the systematic talent scouting and youth development measures that had been implemented throughout the country since 1970, particularly by Georges Boulogne, slowly began to have a positive impact. The Centre technique national Fernand-Sastre, opened in 1988, was a venue that the national team has used regularly ever since. This sporting development was mirrored in club football by the growing importance of AS Saint-Étienne at European level. Under Hidalgo and his successor Henri Michel (1984-1988), the Équipe Tricolore not only regularly qualified for major international tournaments, but also finished three of those four finals in top positions. Because of the four appearances, this period is also known as "The Magnificent Four" (French: les quatre glorieuses).

In their first World Cup appearance in 12 years, the finals in Argentina, the Bleus were forced to return home after the group stages and missed out on the 1980 European Championship finals, but the 'Platini Gang' (la bande à Platini), named after their leading figure, reached the semi-finals of both the 1982 World Cup in Spain and the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. They met their German rivals, losing both times, but it was their performance in Seville (3-3 aggregate, 4-5 on penalties) that left a lasting impression. Four years later, they finished third in the tournament, as in 1958, after victories over Italy and Brazil, among others. The 1984 European Championship on home soil saw the team win their first ever title, winning all five of their matches (against Denmark, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Portugal and Spain). The 'magic midfield quadrangle' of Michel Platini, a director and nine-time goalscorer in outstanding form, Alain Giresse, Jean Tigana and Luis Fernández formed the core of an evolved formation. Around them were goalkeeper Joël Bats, defenders Patrick Battiston, Maxime Bossis, Jean-François Domergue, Yvon Le Roux, strikers Bernard Lacombe, Bruno Bellone and Didier Six, with Manuel Amoros, Daniel Bravo, Jean-Marc Ferreri, Bernard Genghini, Thierry Tusseau and Dominique Rocheteau as substitutes, and goalkeepers Philippe Bergeroo and Albert Rust, who were the only players not to play a minute. In 1985, France won the inaugural Artemio Franchi Cup by beating reigning Copa América champions Uruguay 2-0.

Under Hidalgo and Michel, the senior side won 58, drew 27 and lost only 27 games. The two years following the 1982 World Cup were particularly successful, with France recording 12 wins, four draws and just two defeats - against Poland in August 1982 and Denmark in September 1983. Hidalgo was also the first French coach to make a dark-skinned player captain of the team, Marius Trésor in October 1976.

The long road to the top

After the core of this team had finished their career, a lean period followed, in which the qualification for the European Championship 1988 as well as the World Championships 1990 and 1994 failed. France were eliminated early on at the 1992 European Championship.

It was not until the 1996 European Championships that the Équipe Tricolore again advanced far in a tournament, beating Spain, Bulgaria, Romania and the Netherlands, but missing out on a place in the final against the Czechs. Nevertheless, coach Aimé Jacquet had already put together the team with which he would win the world title two years later. The 1990s also saw the start of a development that contributed to the increase in performance: More and more national team players were signed by clubs from neighbouring countries that were considered to be stronger, initially mainly in the Italian league, but later also in the English and then Spanish leagues. The Bundesliga, on the other hand, has rarely attracted regular players from across the Rhine; Bixente Lizarazu was one of the first in 1997.

At the 1998 World Cup on home soil, the Bleus marched through their preliminary group in commanding fashion, then edged out Paraguay, Italy and Croatia with a little more difficulty before beating favourites Brazil 3-0 in the final. The cornerstones of the team were goalkeeper Fabien Barthez, defender and captain Laurent Blanc and the outstanding director Zinédine Zidane, a worthy successor to Raymond Kopa and Michel Platini. Together with Marcel Desailly, Lilian Thuram, Bixente Lizarazu, Youri Djorkaeff, Didier Deschamps, Emmanuel Petit, Alain Boghossian, Christian Karembeu, Stéphane Guivarc'h, Thierry Henry, David Trezeguet and the supplementary players Frank Lebœuf, Vincent Candela, Bernard Diomède, Robert Pires, Patrick Vieira and Christophe Dugarry, they formed a team that was invincible in those weeks. As in the 1984 European Championship, only the second and third goalkeepers (Lionel Charbonnier, Bernard Lama) failed to make a single appearance. In the run-up to this tournament, an official national team supporters' club was set up with the support of the FFF; on the other hand, the well-known battle cry "Allez, les Bleus!" ("On, you Blues!") is much older.

France confirmed their success two years later at the European Championship in the Netherlands and Belgium, beating Italy 2-1 on golden goals in the final to become the first reigning world champions. At the 2002 World Cup, however, they were eliminated in the preliminary round without scoring a goal of their own. The 2004 European Championship ended for the Équipe Tricolore in the quarter-finals, where they lost 1-0 to eventual tournament winners Greece. However, they did win the Confederations Cup in 2001 and 2003. The composition of the Bleus - with an increasing proportion of second- and third-generation immigrants and players born outside mainland France - prompted the political "right-winger" Jean-Marie Le Pen to rant in 2006 that the French people could no longer recognise themselves in this team.

From 1988 until the summer of 2004 (when Raymond Domenech took over as coach), the team's overall record was unreservedly positive, with 113 wins to just 22 losses and 40 draws. In May 2004, a friendly against Brazil - the two teams ranked first and second in the world at the time - ended in a 0-0 draw at the Stade de France. The occasion was the 100th birthday of FIFA, the world governing body for football, and it also coincided almost to the day with the 100th anniversary of the Bleus' first official international match. During this period, the Bleus also enjoyed three successes in minor cup competitions, winning the Kirin Cup in 1994 and the Moroccan King's Cup in 1998 and 2000.

France did not qualify for the 2006 World Cup until the last matchday. There, however, they again reached the final, where they met Italy, who this time won on penalties, as they did at the 2000 European Championship. With the World Cup runners-up title and the discord at the end of Zinédine Zidane's national team career - sending off after a headbutt against Marco Materazzi - the most successful period in the national team's history to date, in which the Équipe Tricolore even topped the international rankings from May 2001 to May 2002 and was second again in September 2006, had come to an end.

Sinking to mediocrity and gaining the second star (2006-2018).

France Football, for example, has described the national team's sporting development since 2004 at the latest as a phase of "chronic instability", in which even the runners-up title in 2006 was merely a positive exception. The French did qualify for the 2008 European Championship finals, but were eliminated in the preliminary round. Their participation in the 2010 World Cup was also assured, but they first had to play the elimination matches of the European group runners-up, in which only a late, irregular goal against Ireland opened the way to South Africa - France's equaliser in the second leg was preceded by a clear handball, admitted by Thierry Henry after the match and heavily criticised even in the French press. At the 2010 finals, France were once again eliminated in the group stage by Uruguay, Mexico and hosts South Africa, dropping from ninth to 21st in the FIFA World Ranking as of mid-July.

Given the results and, in particular, the performances of the previous two years, the French pundits had not been overly optimistic about the outcome of the World Cup in the run-up to the tournament, and the blame was laid squarely at the door of coach Domenech, whose premature replacement was repeatedly considered in the 12 months leading up to the finals. Yet his coaching record does not read too badly: up to the World Cup finals, the Bleus won 41 games, drew 23 and lost only twelve. The main problem for some in the media, and for many of France's most respected coaches, was his inability to build a cohesive team from good individual players, allowing them to play to their individual strengths, and his inability to change the details of the French game too often. In July 2010, following the Knysna fiasco, Domenech, a permanent FFF employee, relinquished responsibility for the senior eleven. His successor, Laurent Blanc, received a fixed monthly salary of €100,000 from the FFF.

Blanc's first season was also a positive one, with eight wins, two draws and - in the opening two games - two defeats, as France recorded victories against Brazil and in England and subsequently qualified directly for the European Championship finals. In mid-June 2012, the Bleus increased their unbroken run of games without defeat there to 23 (between 7 September 2010 and 15 June 2012); the French only managed an even longer run under Aimé Jacquet (30 caps without defeat, 16 February 1994 to 9 October 1996). Nevertheless, Blanc did not subsequently renew his contract. In early July 2012, the FFF appointed as his successor Didier Deschamps, who wanted to build a new team. To do so, he had used a total of 39 players in his first season, which ended with a negative record (four wins, two draws and five defeats). For the editors of France Football, his first year was not yet a good time to take stock of the situation ("These eleven games do not yet reveal any progress on the Bleus' current building sites"). With five defeats in 11 games - including the first loss to Germany since 1987 - Deschamps had the worst record of any French coach in his debut season in more than half a century.

In November 2013, the French managed to qualify for the World Cup in Brazil in the play-offs, but the central problem of the national team since 2006 seemed to persist. Potential 'leaders' such as Ribéry, Evra, Abidal or Lloris, who would most likely be expected to 'impart their experience to the younger players, actively guide them to develop in the game and reach a higher level, ... who sometimes take a problem of the collective into their own hands or approach the coach on tactical issues of their own accord', are 'more interested in their own statistics than in the team's performance' (Laurent Blanc). A Ligue 1 coach put it more bluntly: "The intellectual abilities of the team do not keep pace with its technical level". In 2014, however, the successes of Deschamps' work became visible; the team presented itself with a respectable game, had reached the World Cup quarter-finals and was consequently listed by FIFA as one of the eight best teams in the world again. In February 2015, the FFF extended Deschamps' contract prematurely for a further two years until 2018; this was followed by what was, however, only a short-lived slump (in July 2015, another drop to 22nd in the world rankings), as the French were runners-up in the European Championships in the summer of 2016. Along the way, the Stade de France, where the Bleus had just played a friendly against Germany, was also hit by the violent attacks that rocked Paris on 13 November 2015 almost simultaneously in several locations. However, there were no casualties in the stadium itself.

The qualifying groups for the 2018 World Cup had already been drawn in the summer of 2015, and France did not draw an easy lot. Starting in September 2016, France had to face the Netherlands, Sweden, Bulgaria, Belarus and Luxembourg in European Group A. In September 2016, France won a preparatory match in Italy 3:1. In September 2016, France won a preparatory match in Italy 3-1, and the success in Bari extends their streak of not losing to the hosts in Italy since 1962 (three wins and two draws).

The 2017/18 season began with the last four World Cup qualifiers, with France having home advantage on three occasions - including against the Dutch - but at the same time in a "long-distance duel" for group victory with Sweden, where every goal could count to avoid having to qualify via the play-offs, as was the case in 2010 with its close outcome against Ireland. In the end, despite a very poor showing against Luxembourg, France finished four points clear of Sweden and the Netherlands to win their group and be confirmed as World Cup participants in Russia. Coach Deschamps' squad entered the preparation phase for this tournament with friendlies against Wales and in Germany in mid-November 2017.
In the first five games of the season, Deschamps again proved to be very "experimental"; in them, 27 players were used. On the other hand, Hugo Lloris, only the seventh Frenchman, was included in the so-called "hundred club" under him during the 2018 World Cup preliminary round.

The World Cup finals got off to a successful, but tough and lacklustre start. The coach had already fielded the starting eleven in the second group game that would see them through to the knockout rounds, but in the third preliminary round match against the Danes, Deschamps gave a number of other players a run-out as the Bleus needed only a draw to win the group. A key factor in their success was an extremely strong central defensive line of goalkeeper Lloris, centre-backs Umtiti and Varane, and 'clearer' Kanté in front, who ensured that opposing teams could only muster 13 shots on target up to and including the quarter-finals. But the improved performances of Griezmann and Pogba, the sacrificial work of striker Giroud in his own half of the pitch, the 22-year-old full-backs Hernández and Pavard, the speed and wit of Mbappé and the flexibility of the experienced Matuidi were all assets that the last two French opponents in the preliminary and final rounds were unable to match. The coach had by no means set up the starting line-up identically for each opponent, but had responded very individually to the expected tasks both in the depth positioning of the trio Varane-Umtiti-Kanté and in terms of the different positions taken up by the attacking forces. Ultimately, there were four systems in which the French operated in those seven World Cup matches: 4-3-3, 4-4-2, 4-2-3-1 and 4-1-4-1.

By winning a second FIFA star, France returned to the top of the world rankings after a good decade and a half.

Les Bleus from 2018

On the one hand, the low average age of the French world champions provided good conditions for them to continue to play at the top of the concert of the greats in the years to come. On the other hand, the examples of their three predecessors Italy (title winners in 2006), Spain (2010) and Germany (2014) show that the role of the "hunted" is a difficult one. The increasing density of the international schedule for club and national teams - UEFA has introduced another compulsory competition, the Nations League, immediately after the 2018 summer break - could also further increase the pressure of expectations and the strain on the French.

In the autumn of 2018, France faced the Netherlands and Germany twice each in the inaugural UEFA Nations League. These three formed one of four groups in Europe's top division (Division A), from which only the group winners qualify for the final tournament (Final Four) in June 2019. For the first two games, coach Deschamps had called up exactly the same players as in Russia, with the exception of the injured goalkeeper Mandanda, but including the already retired Adil Rami. The Bleus finished level on points with the Dutch in their group, but had the worse goal difference and therefore did not qualify for the last four.

Qualification for the European Championship, which was originally scheduled for 2020, began back in the spring of 2019 but was then postponed by UEFA for a year due to the COVID 19 pandemic. The world champions, as the head of Group H, had to face Iceland, Turkey, Albania, Moldova - against whom France have never played - and neighbours Andorra.

The 2019/20 season

The French had home advantage four times in their remaining six qualifiers, including against two of their three fiercest rivals, Turkey and Albania. The first three of those matches saw three regulars - Paul Pogba, N'Golo Kanté and Kylian Mbappé - miss out, with the coach including three newcomers, including a goalkeeper in Mike Maignan. This position is currently considered a relative weak point in French football, at least behind the "undisputed Lloris".

However, at the preliminary round of the European Championship, which has been postponed until 2021 due to the COVID 19 pandemic, the French face a very demanding task in Group F with defending champions Portugal, Germany and Hungary.

Players used

e = substituted; players with one ^(N) had not yet played in a senior international match.

Goalkeepers: Steve Mandanda (Marseille, 4), Hugo Lloris (Tottenham, 2)

Defenders: Clément Lenglet (FC Barcelona, 6), Raphaël Varane (Real Madrid, 6), Benjamin Pavard (Munich, 4+1e), Lucas Digne (Everton, 3+2e), Lucas Hernández (Munich, 2), Léo Dubois (Lyon, 2), Presnel Kimpembe (Paris, 1)

Midfielders: Corentin Tolisso (Munich, 6), Moussa Sissoko (Tottenham, 4), Thomas Lemar (Atlético Madrid, 1+3e), Blaise Matuidi (Juventus Turin, 3), N'Golo Kanté (Chelsea, 1), Benjamin Mendy (Manchester City, 1)

Attacking players: Antoine Griezmann (FC Barcelona, 6), Olivier Giroud (Chelsea, 5+1e), Kingsley Coman (Munich, 5), Wissam Ben Yedder (Monaco, 2+2e), Jonathan Ikoné^(N) (Lille, 1+3e), Nabil Fekir (Betis Sevilla, 3e), Kylian Mbappé (Paris, 1)

France's 13 goals came from Giroud (4), Coman (3), Ikoné, Lenglet, Ben Yedder, Varane, Tolisso and Griezmann (1 each). Griezmann missed a spot-kick in each of the first two games, so Giroud stepped up to take two more penalties against Iceland and Moldova, both of which he converted.

The 2020/21 season

After an almost ten-month international break due to the pandemic, which also saw the European Championship postponed for a year until 2021, the Bleus entered the Nations League for the second time in September 2020 without much preparation, where they beat European champions Portugal, among others, in their group and qualified for the finals, which will not be held until October 2021 in Italy.

The European qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup began in the spring of 2021. In Group D, the world number two will face Ukraine (24th), Finland (54th), Bosnia-Herzegovina (55th) and Kazakhstan (122nd).

Players used

e = substituted; players with one ^(N) had not yet played in a senior international match.

Goalkeepers: Hugo Lloris (Tottenham, 14), Steve Mandanda (Marseille, 2), Mike Maignan^(N) (Lille, 1e)

Defenders: Raphaël Varane (Real Madrid, 12+2e), Presnel Kimpembe (Paris, 11), Lucas Hernández (Bayern Munich, 10+1e), Benjamin Pavard (Bayern Munich, 10), Lucas Digne (Everton, 6+4e), Clément Lenglet (FC Barcelona, 5), Dayot Upamecano^(N) (Leipzig, 3), Léo Dubois (Lyon, 3), Kurt Zouma (Chelsea, 2+1e), Jules Koundé^{(N) (}Sevilla FC, 1+1e), Ruben Aguilar^{(N) (}Monaco, 1)

Midfielders: Paul Pogba (Manchester United, 11+3e), Adrien Rabiot (Juventus Turin, 10+2e), N'Golo Kanté (Chelsea, 9+1e), Moussa Sissoko (Tottenham, 3+5e), Corentin Tolisso (Bayern Munich, 6+1e), Steven Nzonzi (Rennes, 4+2e), Ferland Mendy (Real Madrid, 2+1e), Thomas Lemar (Atlético Madrid, 2+2e), Eduardo Camavinga^(N) (Rennes, 1+2e), Houssem Aouar^{(N) (}Lyon, 1), Tanguy Ndombele (Tottenham, 1).

Attacking players: Antoine Griezmann (FC Barcelona, 14+2e), Kylian Mbappé (Paris, 10+3e), Olivier Giroud (Chelsea, 6+6e), Anthony Martial (Manchester United, 5+4e), Kingsley Coman (Bayern Munich, 3+6e), Wissam Ben Yedder (Monaco, 2+4e), Karim Benzema (Real Madrid, 5), Ousmane Dembélé (FC Barcelona, 1+4e), Marcus Thuram^(N) (Mönchengladbach, 2+1e), Nabil Fekir (Betis Sevilla, 1e).

France's 33 goals came from Griezmann (8), Giroud (7), Mbappé (4), Dembélé, Benzema (2 each), Upamecano, Camavinga, Tolisso, Kanté, Pavard and Coman, plus an own goal each from Croatia's Dominik Livaković, Ukraine's Vitaliy Mykolenko, Kazakhstan's Sergei Maly and Germany's Mats Hummels. In the first game of the season Griezmann again missed a penalty, so in the second game Giroud stepped up to take another penalty and converted it - as in the previous season. Against Kazakhstan it was Mbappé whose shot from the spot was saved, and Benzema also failed to convert a spot-kick on his comeback against Wales.

For France's games at the European Championship finals, see this special article.

From 1904 (1st official international match) to 1919 (founding of the FFF), the national team was set up by the governing body Comité Français Interfédéral. Joint training of the national players and thus the office of a full-time national coach were unknown in the early days of football, and not only in France. From 1919 onwards, there were occasional coaches for individual matches or tournaments (Olympic Games, World Cup finals), and from 1950/51 onwards there was a permanent coach, although, like Albert Batteux, he was still mainly employed by a club. The team squad for each international match was determined until 1964 by a selection committee of the FFF, which consisted of one or more "technical directors". That is why the national coach there is still often referred to as a sélectionneur (selector).

Selection Committees of the FFF

Three sélectionneurs in particular had a decisive influence on the national team's fortunes, even if at times the selection committee consisted of up to eight members. First, from November 1919 until his death in the summer of 1958, there was Gaston Barreau, who even had sole responsibility for this function from May 1936 to April 1945. However, Barreau was "deprived of his power" in the autumn of 1956, without losing his seat on the committee, and replaced by Paul Nicolas, who had already been a member from August 1949 to December 1953 and again since September 1954. After Nicolas' early death, Georges Verriest initially joined the committee in June 1959 and also took over its position as sole officer from October 1960 until July 1964.

In addition to these three, the selection panel also included a number of other well-known former internationals, namely Gabriel Hanot (March to December 1920, April 1945 to August 1949), Jean Rigal (July 1922 to May 1936, August 1949 to October 1956), Lucien Gamblin (only in October 1923), Henri Bard (November 1924 to February 1930) and Alex Thépot (December 1953 to October 1960).

Trainer

Didier Deschamps is the longest-serving national coach, having been in charge for 116 matches in his nine years in charge. He is followed by Michel Hidalgo (eight and a half years, 76 matches), Albert Batteux (just over seven years, 56 matches) and Raymond Domenech (six years, 79 matches).

In 2018, Deschamps became only the third player after Mário Zagallo and Franz Beckenbauer to win the World Cup as both a player and a coach. At the end of 2019, the federation extended Deschamps' contract early until mid-2022; according to the contract, he will also coach the Bleus at the World Cup in Qatar.

It is worth noting that several French coaches have been, or still are, responsible for the national teams of other countries, particularly from French-speaking Africa, but also from Arabia and Asia. Six of them have even managed a triple-digit number of internationals, namely Claude Le Roy, Hervé Renard, Bruno Metsu and Philippe Troussier, who, unlike Henri Michel and Roger Lemerre, have never been entrusted with France's senior eleven. (As of 23 June 2021)