How Has Deschamps Made France Even Better?

Argentina, France, England or Spain. One of these countries will become world champion again.

These are the four teams that the90lab.com, our public statistics and predictions portal, predicted as the main favourites before the tournament began. With France as the number one contender, with a 17.8% probability of winning in the United States.

Certainly, if there has been one national team that has shown consistency in its performance throughout the tournament, it has been the one Driblab identified as the team to beat: France.

Didier Deschamps' side have won every match and have conceded just two goals in the entire tournament. However, for this writer, the fluid offensive play of the French team has been their most notable aspect throughout the tournament.

It is clear that when your attacking options are Kylian Mbappé, Ousmane Dembele, Michael Olise, Desiré Doué, Bradley Barcola, Rayan Cherki, Marcus Thuram, Jean-Philippe Mateta and Maghnes Akliouche, everything becomes easier.

And yet, France is managing to connect its attackers to the team's play like no other national team has been able to throughout the tournament.

The French team's attackers make contact with the ball more than those of any other national team. Comparing it with the three remaining finalists, England and Spain are close together, with Luis de la Fuente's side slightly above.

The other striking figure is how little, in relative terms, Argentina's offensive players make contact with the ball.

Despite this, it should be clarified that Argentina plays a style of football in which everyone moves together and patiently tries to build dangerous collective plays. It is not a national team that needs such a high dose of individual inspiration, with the exception of Leo Messi.

The former Barcelona player is a special case, because Argentina barely uses another nominal attacker besides Messi. As we saw against Egypt, we would only consider Julián Álvarez as Argentina's other attacker.

Therefore, Argentina's very low percentage is influenced both by their way of understanding the game and by the positional naming of their players.

Back to France, which is an overwhelming attacking team, one that is not so concerned with the quality of its shots, but with the quantity of shots that Mbappé, Dembelé or Olise can take.

France is the national team in the 2026 World Cup that takes the most shots in open play (not counting set pieces) with 16 per match, is also the one that takes the most shots from individual play (7), and the one that generates the most shots following an offensive transition (2.17).

Spain slightly surpasses them in the percentage of their open-play shots that come from individual play. The individual route accounts for 46% of Spain's shots, whereas it does so in 43.8% of France's.

In short, it is a team that benefits from the extremely high individual quality of its players and from the fact that they also have a quick trigger. France, even while being one of the national teams that holds the ball the most per match, makes the most of its opportunities to connect with these players.

Argentina or Spain are national teams that prefer to build up play, or to have moments of greater calm with the ball, in order to manage the match.

France, on the other hand, is an avalanche of verticality, carries and dribbles, aspects in which, in terms of volume, it is well above the other three semi-finalists.

Deschamps has put together a team that, besides having the highest individual attacking level, has two further assets: good pressing that allows it to recover the ball quickly to play with its attackers, and a squad with an outstanding physical profile.

On the first point, France is the fifth national team in the World Cup with the most recoveries in the opponent's half (15.17) and the one that recovers the most in the final 40 metres (7.33).

On the second point, the physical profile, France averages 104.6 sprints per 90' in the World Cup. Well above England's 93.4, Spain's 84.5 and Argentina's 80.3. And France's average maximum speed is higher than that of every team in the World Cup with the exception of Uruguay, Canada and Curaçao.

Predicting the champion of a World Cup is an almost impossible task, especially when the level is this even. However, based on what has been seen so far, a team with as many players capable of making the difference as France has looks difficult to stop. Though not impossible.