France possess arguably the strongest international squad in world football, yet managing such an abundance of talent is rarely as straightforward as it might appear from the outside.
History is full of examples where clubs loaded with superstars have collapsed under the weight of expectation, unable to blend elite personalities into a cohesive and functional unit.
Didier Deschamps has been solving that exact puzzle since taking charge of France in 2012, consistently reinventing his systems to extract maximum output from a vast pool of elite players.
Perhaps most impressively, he has built a reputation for doing this mid-tournament, adjusting his tactical approach game by game until he finds formulas capable of winning or nearly winning the World Cup.
That same familiar pattern is emerging again at this World Cup, with Deschamps making significant and bold adjustments after France’s opening match against Senegal.
At the heart of his challenge is fitting Kylian Mbappe into the number nine role in a way that serves the team, with the 27-year-old preferring to be deeply involved in build-up play rather than simply acting as a finishing runner.
In qualifying, Deschamps had constructed a lopsided 4-2-4 system designed to accommodate his key players in roles mirroring their club positions, with Hugo Ekitike on the left, Michael Olise on the right, and Ousmane Dembele operating as a roaming false nine just behind Mbappe.
Against Senegal in France’s World Cup opener, Desire Doue replaced the injured Ekitike in an otherwise similar setup, but problems emerged as distances between France’s front players and their midfield two became dangerously exploitable.
Senegal repeatedly found space between France’s pressing forwards and the midfield pairing of Adrien Rabiot and Aurelien Tchouameni, creating dangerous chances that forced Deschamps into action at half-time.
The most significant adjustment was swapping the roles of Olise and Dembele, a decision requiring genuine managerial courage given that Dembele had just claimed the Ballon d’Or award.
Moving the reigning Ballon d’Or winner from a central position out to the right of midfield is precisely the kind of bold call that many coaches would hesitate to make, yet the results have been impressive.
Dembele’s work rate from that wider right position has helped France build a far more compact and disciplined defensive structure, with the team now sitting in a 4-4-1-1 rather than pressing high in a 4-4-2.
Olise’s movement into more central positions has directly benefited Mbappe, with the Bayern Munich winger proving France’s most effective player at threading passes between defensive lines.
Olise naturally holds deeper positions before timing his runs into the box, whereas Dembele’s instinct to drop deep from a centre-forward role was reducing France’s presence inside the penalty area.
Dembele has thrived from the right-wing position, excelling against Senegal before scoring a first-half hat-trick against Norway, demonstrating precisely why the tactical switch made sense.
Jules Kounde’s role has also evolved, with the Barcelona defender now taking up more central positions higher up the pitch, acting as both a decoy runner and providing immediate defensive cover when possession is lost.
The fluidity Deschamps has retained while making these adjustments is what truly stands out, with Mbappe, Olise, Doue, Dembele and Bradley Barcola all continuing to rotate across the forward line naturally.
These rotations are built on strong on-field understanding between the players rather than rigid patterns, giving France an organic quality that is difficult for opponents to prepare for or suppress.
France have looked more threatening going forward while becoming considerably harder to play through defensively, a combination that has historically been the foundation of successful tournament campaigns.
Deschamps’ enduring strength has always been his focus on individual skill sets, engineering collective conditions on the pitch that allow multiple elite players to flourish simultaneously.
