DBasia.news – The French national team carried a high target when competing in the 2020 European Cup. Les Blues had ambitions to win the title in order to marry it with the 2018 World Cup trophy.
The status of world champion has made France one of the leading players. Moreover, Paul Pogba and his team mates were also finalists in the previous edition.
But a warning was given by the coach of the French national team, Didier Deschamps. He said marrying the World Cup and European Cup trophies would not be easy to realize.
“Winning at the highest level is challenging and staying there is even more difficult. But we have players with that ambition, (although) we have to prevent them from getting too confident,” Deschamps told Mundo Deportivo.
“You have to go through things gradually. We can’t think about (the final at) Wembley today, but have to go to Munich and Budapest first.”
France’s road to winning the title will indeed be steep. They are in Group F along with Portugal, Germany and Hungary.
Deschamps himself is very aware of the difficulty of marrying the World Cup and European Cup titles. The 52 year old man was the captain of France when he won the two prestigious titles.
Deschamps led France to win the 1998 World Cup in public alone. Two years later, he still served as captain and successfully presented the European Cup trophy which took place in Belgium and the Netherlands.
“In 1998 we had an 18 year old player who two years later matured and developed. Now I have a lot of players in the 2018 squad and it continues, not just young players,” he added.
Even so, Deschamps is quite optimistic that his team will be able to achieve this target. He believes France is now stronger than when they won the World Cup three years ago.
“I don’t like to compare but I have no less strength at all levels than in 2018. I would even say that there are more offensive options today than there were three years ago.”