Soccer-France coach Deschamps on brink of ton of triumphs
FILE PHOTO: Soccer Football - UEFA Euro 2024 Qualifiers - Group B - France v Netherlands - Stade de France, Saint-Denis, France - March 24, 2023 France's Kylian Mbappe celebrates with coach Didier Deschamps after the match REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo
By Mark Gleeson
HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - When coach Didier Deschamps takes to the dugout on Monday for France’s European Championship opener against Austria, it will be an opportunity to register a phenomenal 100th win in charge of the team.
The 55-year-old is by some margin the most experienced coach at the tournament in Germany, with his almost 12 years in charge of Les Bleus, and brings with him impressive credentials as a player too.
Monday’s Group D match in Duesseldorf marks Deschamps’s 154th game as French coach with 99 wins, 30 draws and 24 losses in a glory-filled career, where consistency and calmness have been his hallmarks.
He has been coach of his side more than three years longer than the next most experienced manager at Euro 2024 -– England’s Gareth Southgate.
Deschamps has won the World Cup as both a coach and player -- first in 1998 on home soil in a star-studded French line-up.
His considerable role as midfield kingpin was belittled by Eric Cantona who branded him a "vulgar water carrier" but Deschamps earned 103 caps and his club career saw him win the Champions League with Olympique de Marseille and Juventus.
As a coach he has taken France to two World Cup finals, victorious in Russia in 2018 and losing four years later to Argentina on post-match penalties in the 2022 final in Qatar.
“What keeps me going is the passion, the desire and the determination. What interests me is always having new objectives,” he said on the eve of the tournament in Germany.
“At a very high international level, winning is very difficult and maintaining it is even more difficult, because only one team wins and then the others don't sleep.”
There is the possibility in Germany for him to become the first to win the World Cup and the Euros as both a player and a coach but that is not something he said he was concerned about.
“The objective is around the French national team in terms of what we've achieved and what we're capable of achieving,” he said.
(Reporting by Mark Gleeson; editing by Clare Fallon)