When a cat has cornered a mouse and appears to be toying with its prey, it isn\u2019t actually being cruel so much as it is planning and practicing all the ways in which it may finally kill it off.<\/p>\n
We are, it almost goes without saying, speaking about France at the 2026 World Cup<\/a> here. Les Bleus have scored at least three goals in their last four games and, each time, looked an awful lot like they might have run the score up further, if only they hadn\u2019t run out of time, energy or interest.<\/p>\n And yet France<\/a>, extraordinarily, also seem to still be very much working out what they even are at this World Cup. Like the student in art school who plainly has more talent in his pinky toe than the rest of his class can muster in the aggregate, but who is still tinkering with the basics of form and style.<\/p>\n Didier Deschamps\u2019 France are going through a radical transformation before our very eyes.<\/p>\n In his 14 years in charge, Deschamps built rigid and conservative sides, no matter how much talent they teemed with. These dour editions were managed and controlled to within an inch of their lives. They were careful teams, who engineered victories rather than earning them through their guile and their gifts. You can hardly argue with the results. A final at Euro 2016. A World Cup title in 2018. A final lost on penalties four years later.<\/p>\n Deschamps, who lost his mother last week, will step down after this World Cup, but he seems determined to do things differently this time around. In this last gasp of his time in charge, he has suddenly subscribed to a kind of Great Man Theory, but for football. He has turned over control to Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 and Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 and, crucially, to Michael Olise, his attacking triumvirate laying waste to everyone they have so far faced.<\/p>\n Those three are working out a system for their entire side on the fly. It turns out Olise is more effective underneath Mbapp\u00e9, who has finally embraced the lone striker role he long resisted. They have found by trial and error that Jules Kound\u00e9 is best utilized through underlapping runs from right back. Such has been the French superiority over their opponents at this tournament that the skill and experience gap has more than sufficed to work on some things along the way.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have our weapons,\u201d France substitute Malo Gusto said. \u201cWe showed that tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n On a New Jersey afternoon when the heat and humidity conspired to feel like 93 degrees F \/ 34 degrees C at kickoff, France utterly dominated Sweden in a last-32 bout that ended 3-0 but felt far more lopsided. Les Bleus had more gears to go to. They just chose not to. They didn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n Mbapp\u00e9 delivered his first warning with a disallowed goal in the 20th minute, when he\u2019d been offside by a shoulder. A few dangerous shots from Adrien Rabiot came on either side of Mbapp\u00e9 clanging the end product of a well-worked French attack on the near post.<\/p>\n Olise, blessing us with yet more of his magical oeuvre, cracked a bicycle kick off the near post and Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 curled the rebound just wide. Mbapp\u00e9 hopped around in frustration. He\u2019d had enough. It was time for the mouse to die.<\/p>\n More Olise trickery. His shot from outside the box was pushed just wide by goalkeeper Jacob Widell Zetterstr\u00f6m. On the ensuing corner Olise and Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 flashed the ball to Mbapp\u00e9. He beat two men and finally curled the ball home. 1-0. He raced into the open arms of Deschamps.<\/p>\n