World Cup 2022 | France – England | Adrien Rabiot, more than reasons to love him

Didier Deschamps masters resurrections wonderfully. Like Karim Benzema, Adrien Rabiot also enjoys an unexpected second life in selection. Like the Madrid player, he may have believed himself to be definitively excluded from the coach’s plans when, in 2018, he refused a place as a reservist and charged Didier Deschamps: “I consider that the coach’s choice in my regard does not respond to any sporting logic”. The France team was world champion, seemed to him to have scuttled itself for good, all alone and like a grown-up.

This decision was only the epilogue of a long series of choices or statements that clouded his image. A delay on the eve of the final of the Coupe de France which earned him an exclusion, tough negotiations with a PSG which he ended up leaving free, his refusal to play sentinel in Paris, the “fear of getting hurt” and the “cold” to justify a failed performance in Bulgaria with the Blues: the image of the elegant midfielder has long navigated between that of an arrogant kid and that of a capricious spoiled child.

Rabiot always knew what he wanted and the path he would take. He never cared about his image. But between self-confidence and presumptuousness, the line is often thin, especially when speaking is rare. And all it took was a slight misbehavior to condemn him in the eyes of all. Four years after his sulking at Clairefontaine, he warned before flying to Doha.

“My image will change if the competition goes well, we know how it goeshe confided on November 18th. But I feel good like this. If my image is blurry, it’s because I want it to. I don’t spread out a lot. I don’t show myself off the field so much. I’m not focused on it.” France is not (yet?) world champion but its image has already changed.

Everyone wanted him in 2018, France swears by him in the midfield in 2022. His start to the World Cup completely made people forget the absences of Paul Pogba and N’Golo Kanté. “He makes you want to be lovedrejoiced Olivier Giroud at a press conference. We really like ‘Adri’. He is natural, he himself is smiling, important in the locker room, on the pitch. His start to the World Cup is remarkable. It is in the oven and at the mill. I feel fulfilled, he is an important player for us.“

first fighter

Rabiot is the first fighter in this team of warriors built around Kylian Mbappé with more than four balls recovered per game, an impressive running volume and 11.7 kilometers covered on average. Rabiot, already a scorer and decisive passer in Doha, is another man.

Didier Deschamps, who had the merit of reaching out to him again, appreciates the metamorphosis: “On a human level, he is as he is, I know him well. Except that he removed things that bothered him at one time, but we have to go back much further when his placement or positioning could already limit him psychologicallyrecalled the coach at a press conference. Today is a complete environment.”

The former outcast has become the balancing point for world champions in their quest for a third star. He himself savored before the competition: “I’m happy and I’d rather be in this position than I was four years ago.“France too because now, she has only reasons to love him.