Morning.
Let’s start with last night’s game between France and Austria, which saw William Saliba start for Les Bleus. The chatter pre-tournament was that he’d be on the bench, and I have to say I’m glad he got the nod. A player of his quality can only improve further by playing at the highest level – it would do him no good to be sitting watching rather than out there on the pitch. Didier Deschamps explained his decision afterwards, saying:
“If I decided to play William Saliba, it is because I thought he was more ready than Konate for such a match. But I don’t want to lose anyone either, we will need everyone. They [Saliba and Upamecano] have 120 minutes together for the France national team, it’s not a lot, but they have this ability to be very solid in one-on-one [situations], even if there were some clearances that they could improve on, they exuded a lot of strength and calmness. We needed that against such an opponent.”
He played as the left-sided centre-half, the opposite to where operates for Arsenal, and I thought he had a tidy enough game. No French player made more passes, and no starting French player had a better accuracy than him (95%). There were a couple of little moments defensively, a missed header in the first half saw Austria have a great chance at goal, but that situation developed primarily because Dayot Upemecano gave the ball away cheaply high up the pitch and was caught out of position.
I was impressed by Austria though. They were well organised and really worked hard, snapping into tackles all over the pitch – they just lacked that little bit of quality with the final ball. France’s forwards demonstrated their incredible pace plenty of times, but like the opposition didn’t have enough in the final third to consistently threaten the keeper. The fact it was an unfortunate/clumsy own goal kinda tells the story.
Kylian Mbappe missed the kind of chance you’d expect him to score in his sleep, and his night ended…
Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/06/euro-2024-saliba-and-france-belgium-ukraine-beaten/
Author : arseblog
Publish date : 2024-06-18 06:06:12
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