Zlatan Ibrahimovic hammered the French national team after their World Cup exit, one which of course includes two AC Milan stars.
The elimination of Didier Deschamps’ side at the hands of Spain continues to spark debate, because so much more was expected from France’s performance. Mike Maignan and Adrien Rabiot have a third-place play-off against England on Saturday, but wanted a rematch with Argentina on Sunday.
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The pair were not exactly rated highly in the Spain game, but the failings were larger. Milan’s senior advisor Ibrahimovic offered his usual frank opinion during a segment on Fox Sports, in which he went into more detail about why he believes things fell so flat for Les Bleus when it mattered most.
“A few things could have been done differently during the match. That’s the difficult part for a coach, and that’s why they’re coaches or managers. They have to understand and know the right moment to act, when to change,” he said (via PianetaMilan).
“I had the impression that the French players weren’t ‘alive’, they weren’t active. Obviously, you don’t want to concede a goal to Spain and then have to chase the ball… they could have done more. Spain were the better team.”
Despite the criticism of the coach, Ibrahimovic wanted to praise the work that Deschamps has done in recent years and also what the French side have achieved.
“There are few extraordinary players who have also been extraordinary coaches. He’d already won a World Cup, won a Nations League, lost a European Championship final and a World Cup final… People think it’s easy, because they have so many stars on the pitch, but it’s not easy.
“There are so many things to manage, to keep under control. They always win trophies, and when they don’t, they still remain among the best, at the top, it’s only the last match they fail to win. This time they stumbled on the penultimate step.”
After a vacation following the England match, it will be time for Maignan and Rabiot to begin working under the orders of Amorim. They are expected to join the rest of the group at Milanello on August 12.
Bro stop putting gasoline everywhere… sometimes he just acts dumb ffs
Someone shut him up. He’s made a total of 5 world cup appearances, and now he thinks he can start criticising every team.
Sometimes I wonder how Henry feels when he has to stand beside this guy and listen to what he has to say. I remember the way he bashed Madueke like 3 or 4 times and I was like, “sir we get it already, Madueke had a poor game but c’mon!”
Honesty hurts but its good to be honest.. you should try it.
France were really really bad against spain no need to wrap it in foil so snowflakes wont get hurt.
Bro no one is questioning whether his opinion is the truth or not. It’s the attitude with which you present the truth we’re talking about. Yeah France had a bad game against Spain but Spain were held to a draw against Cape Verde. The point being that you won’t always have a good game. Then if I were to speak about France having a bad game, I can either just present the facts without using words that make it sound like anyone would intentionally just come out to play Spain not wanting to win or I can say it as though I’m infallible and never had a bad game in my career.
The man spoke about CR7’s presence holding back the Portugal team but the same man took a valuable spot in our UCL squad while being injured cuz they were hoping he’d recover in time to feature. He could’ve told the coach to use that spot for someone else but well there’s a part of him that believed he could win that one trophy that had eluded him.
You can tell people the truth but you don’t have to be a jerk about it is my message.
France wanted to win the WC, they were probably the favorites…anything less was a huge disappointment. I really don’t think they gave a hoot about this game.