Trivializing victories is not at all the style of the house. For the France team, all matches count. And this even when you are already qualified and face the very modest team of Gibraltar, 198th nation in the FIFA rankings. This Saturday, in Nice, it was a match for statistics. An ideal meeting to mark the spirits which the Blues did not fail to succeed. Large winners 14-0, the vice-world champions thus achieved the biggest victory in their history. The previous record dated September 6, 1995 against Azerbaijan (10-0) in Auxerre, with Didier Deschamps on the field. An evening that will go down in history despite the low stakes.
“It’s great, we had the goal of beating this record. We had this seriousness throughout the match. We did it collectively,” captain Kylian Mbappé, author of a hat-trick, rejoiced on TF 1. Olivier Giroud, who now has 56 goals in blue, also spoke of a “perfect evening” on the first channel. “The coach said you had to have fun while remaining serious. At half-time, he said we had done things very well. It wasn’t easy but we wanted to get this France-Azerbaijan record. Gibraltar was courageous at 10 against 11.”
“We wanted to keep this clean sheet again. That was the goal”
Quickly reduced to ten after the expulsion of their defender Ethan Santos, guilty of a terrible tackle on the Parisian Titi Warren Zaire-Emery, scorer but injured, Gibraltar took the tide throughout the meeting, without ever being able to react. In his garden, Jean-Clair Todibo from Nice had fun. “Before the match, we weren’t focused on this record,” he explained to us during his time in the mixed zone. But, at half-time, we said why not beat him? We did it and it’s very good for us. We had to stay focused, not give the opponent the chance to hope. We wanted to keep this clean sheet once again. That was the goal. »
Mission more than accomplished thanks, among other things, to the canes of Kingsley Coman who, in addition to having scored two goals, was phenomenal with his percussion and his well-felt dribbling. “Before the match, the coach told us to respect the opponent, to give everything. We had to be in style, recalls the Bavarian, it’s the first time (Editor’s note: he won by such a margin). We have already seen scores with Bayern but never this many. It’s a record that I hope will remain. We are happy but it is short-lived because we already have to prepare for the next match. »
The Blues will have one last exit to negotiate in these qualifications for Euro 2024, Tuesday in Athens. The opportunity, undoubtedly, for Didier Deschamps to make some changes, his team already assured of being seeded for the draw scheduled for Saturday December 2, in Hamburg.
