Olivier Giroud finds his scoring boots for France at just the right time

Just as his place in the team was looking vulnerable, Giroud scored a wonderful winner against the Netherlands in Paris

By Adam White and Eric Devin for Get French Football News

The Nations League is a real competition rather than a set of money-spinning friendlies, but there was expected to be something of the valedictory about France’s two matches over the weekend. Apart from the injured Steve Mandanda and Hugo Lloris, Didier Deschamps chose the same 23 players who had lifted the World Cup in Russia eight weeks earlier, even though the futures of some of those players have been called into question by some in France. Deschamps has never been swayed by media pressure, either tactically or in his selections, but there has remained, even in the wake of France’s triumphant summer, a question of how he would navigate this team’s next step.

In their first match at the World Cup, France secured a scrappy win over Australia with Olivier Giroud and Blaise Matuidi only featuring from the bench. It looked as if the two thirty-something stalwarts would be consigned to that role for the tournament, brought along as alternatives rather than first choices. Their performances, of course, proved otherwise, with Giroud’s physicality giving France’s talented but lightweight attackers a necessary physical presence and Matuidi’s versatility allowing a bizarrely lopsided tactical formation to bring the best from Paul Pogba and Kylian Mbappé.

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