Even though they have only won one of their last six games, they are still one of the favorites in Qatar.

Didier Deschamps will have to make some changes to France’s team because regular starters N’Golo Kante and Paul Pogba are injured and can’t play.

France has too many good midfielders so Deschamps will have a lot of choices. One is Aurelien Tchouameni, 22 years old, and has done well for Real Madrid.

France hopes to move on from Group D, which includes Australia, Tunisia, and Denmark. It’s almost a carbon copy of their World Cup 2018 group, where they were put in with Denmark, Australia, and Peru and finished first with seven points.

The World Cup is where Les Bleus play

The first time Les Bleus won was at the World Cup in 1958, held in Sweden. Just Fountaine, a striker, scored 13 goals in six games.

Brazil would beat France 5-2 in the semi-finals and go on to win the tournament.

In the 1980s, France played in its first international games. In 1982 and 1986, France came in fourth and third at the World Cup, respectively, and won the European Championships in 1984.

Michel Platini was an excellent midfielder for France, and Marius Trésor was a great defender. They played football with a lot of energy, which led to some of the most exciting games in World Cup history, like the famous 3–3 semi-final against West Germany in 1982.

The country had to wait until 1998 to host the World Cup for the second time because France’s following team failed to qualify for two successive World Cups.

The 1998 squad featured Thierry Henry, David Trezeguet, and Zinedine Zidane, who easily won the competition, defeating Brazil 3-0 in the championship match, and launching a new era of supremacy that would culminate in another European Championship in 2000.

After losing in the group stage of the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan and then losing to the hosts and eventual champions Greece in the quarterfinals of the 2002 European Championships, France would eventually lose in the World Cup final in 2004. After a 1-1 draw with Italy, France fell 5-3 on penalties in a match that will go down in history for Zidane’s notorious headbutt on Marco Materazzi.

Expectations

France, one of the favorites to win the tournament, will try to get to the semi-finals, if not the final.

The French team should have no trouble getting through their group. They will probably play Poland or Mexico in the next round if there are no major upsets. They could play England, the Netherlands, or Senegal if there are no major upsets.

In the semi-finals, they could face Brazil, Belgium, or Germany.

With so many world-class players on their team, they must be taken seriously as a World Cup contender. But this is the first time a country has done this again since Brazil did it in 1962.

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