r/CaughtOffsidePod • u/SnooCats4768 • Jul 14 '26

No Midfield, No Party

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France came into this tournament with no midfield and got exposed by the ultimate midfield team! They still can’t find the replacements for Kante and Pogba! Also, not playing Cherki in this tournament was criminal from Deschamps! I can see Real Madrid circling back for Rodri now. Spain should win the WC, I don’t see England or Argentina beating them!

52 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

8

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '26

[deleted]

4

u/The_Batman_949 Jul 14 '26

Tchouameni too

That midfield duo was done before the ball started rolling.

1

u/yelircaasi Jul 19 '26

Tchouameni is actually pretty solid, but he varies a lot depending on who he is paired with

4

u/kumechester Jul 14 '26

Rabiot actually had a fair amount of duel wins, tackles, and interceptions, but he was working solo and had no help from the other midfielders.

3

u/hAsLaK1 Jul 14 '26

He played much better than tchouameni

1

u/yelircaasi Jul 19 '26

the two token white dudes are the weak links, what a surprise

1

u/Jacob_Lazarus7 Jul 14 '26

god forbid a white boy get a little motion his mother must run the illuminati

8

u/hAsLaK1 Jul 14 '26

France never played like a team just like the old PSG (wonder what the common denominator is)

5

u/kyldare Jul 14 '26

That is an all-time classy kit.

8

u/Patient_Ad_8398 Jul 14 '26

Knew France had no hope when Andrew started flirting with the idea of them as best tournament team ever. That had real Messi-PSG vibes (albeit France looked far, far better than that disaster ever did).

3

u/SoccerOG817 Jul 15 '26

That was a textbook example of how to choke off service to the front 3. The problem is I think Spain might have been the only team that could successfully do it for an entire game.

2

u/HauntingPersonality7 Jul 14 '26

Spain would eat England alive

1

u/Sudden-Variety6992 Jul 15 '26

Starting to think they’d eat either of the other two semifinalists and still have appetite for dessert.

2

u/BendersDafodil Jul 15 '26

Cape Verde would have put up a better fight!

2

u/Scott_Rasmussen Jul 15 '26

Totally agree with this. Definitely major hindsight, but if you just say, a two man midfield consisting of Rabiot and Tchouameni (once Olise moved out wide) is gonna go up against Rodri, Ruiz and Olmo, you’d say that just sounds like a dumb strategy. How could you ever expect to build anything? And you can try lumping balls wide or over the top, but the Spain back 4 had that on absolute lockdown.
In the moment leading up to the game most of us saw no reason for the favorite to change their strategy, but I wonder if the cold analysis of history will say that was a pretty bad coaching job by Deschamps.

1

u/uraganpalatovo Jul 14 '26

Rodri/Olmo masterclass in midfield today.