It could easily be guessed that sooner or later the air conditioning here in Doha would take its toll. Of course, to think that a world final could be decided not by the sprints of Di Maria or Mbappé, but by the drafts (or even something more, in all honesty) that blow intense and icy between the Press Center, hotels and stadiums (a , practically, just to give an example, the Education City Stadium which hosted Brazil Croatia in the quarter-finals) certainly could not be predicted.
France worried about the thermometer
And yet, at this point we are, if in the French retreat more than the videos relating to Messi and his companions we look at the thermometer, and even with a certain concern. The latest info gives Rabiot and Upamecano on the road to recovery, Coman stable (but the thumb points up) Varane and Konatè those further back, and in any case all struggling with coughs and sneezes and (fortunately) negative swabs. Deschamps washes his hands of it, in the sense that he too has resumed using abundant disinfectant gel, and in the meantime the transalpine delegation protects itself as best it can (for example, asking the journalists present in the mixed area to use a mask in the matches against England and Morocco, with truly modest results in terms of application and prevention.On the other hand, the most experts predicted (rightly) that it would become the world championship for woolen caps and scarves, imagining the Middle Eastern and Persian zeal in putting to develop functional ventilation systems to make the stay of foreign guests (and Western ones in particular) comfortable.The fact is that the cough and snorts of the Asian journalist whom we inadvertently sat next to on the bus that took us to Al Bayt, the another evening, on the occasion of the second semifinal between Bleus and Leoni d’Atlante, they did not bode well (neither for him nor for the writer , so far however miraculously spared from the virus or bacillus).
Fried air
After all, Saturday in the global football village is not only the day of air conditioning, but also that of hot air par excellence: vacuous par excellence is the final for third place, which no one wants to play (but which end no one even wants to lose); vain and light, in particular, the words of the protagonists expected from the total challenge for the trophy, with considerations and reflections that the field, with its raw and definitive verdict, will sweep away, dispersing them in the wind and in memory.
However, Didier Deschamps gave them flashes of truth: after ten years on the national team bench, a European home loss in the final, a World Cup win and another final, the words with which he dismissed the hypothesis of a farewell to the role as a coach after this Qatari Cup they sounded more like a definitive greeting than a renewed desire to remain at the helm of Les Bleus (with Zidane constantly on the sidelines for some time now…).
So Didier unbuttoned himself a bit, for example when he put the team and only that ahead of all particular and personal interests, or when he admitted that he (actually, especially him) and his boys feel alone “against the whole world and maybe even some French” who would like Messi to be champion, but who in any case remain focused on the goal of victory; and the disappointment against those who still hypothesized a last-minute recovery of Benzema, also invited to Doha to attend the final by the French president Macron, together with other excellent injured players and great exes (but Zidane himself declined the high-ranking invitation) seemed sincere .