Will, ability and a careful coaching template have forged a side whose sheer youthfulness should frighten the rest of the world
And fade to blue. On a stormy, slightly wild afternoon in Moscow France became world champs for the second time, providing a bookend to one victorious era and offering a seductive hint of another to come.
It seemed fitting that victory here was never actually in doubt. This despite the attentions of a manically perpetrated Croatia who seemed to be charging after something that simply kept moving away, engine purring, geared to a higher rate of frequency.
It seemed fitting, too, that the trophy should be handed over in fierce, warm Moscow rain at the end of a startlingly good World Cup, with every player, volunteer and head of state present soaked to the skin- all except for the great Vlad, who showed his eye for the penalty details by deploying his personal golf umbrella holder.
Above all it was fitting that the most talented squad in Russia should take the trophy at a gallop and in a manner that poses some obvious questions.
Mainly, how have they done this? And how much better can they get?
There was a suggestion of an answer to both sets of at the final whistling at the Luzhniki Stadium. As the referee, Nestor Pitana, blew to signify the dawning of the age of Didier an entire team of men who could probably also have won this tournament came sprinting on in formation, howling with joy and lunging themselves into the arms of their fraternal peers.
The ages of the reserves operating on were salutary: 21, 21, 22, 23, 25, 23.
This France squad was the second youngest at the World Cup. And here is the other thing: thanks to the efforts of these academy graduates France can now claim to be the most powerful nation in world football in the past 20 years.
Spain's brilliance was more concentrated and indeed more transformative. But France have appeared in five members of the last 11 World Cup and Euro finals, winning three of them. Spain have played three, won three. Germany have played three, won one.
For the English it is a roll call of world champs that reads back like a gentle rebuke to any lingering dreamings of major nation status: France, Germany, Spain, Italy. The World Cup has now expended the past 12 years and counting in the Schengen Zone, with one nation right at the heart of the project. From Thierry to Kylian: welcome to the age of L'Hexagone .
Given their resources there will be some wistful thinks about France's style. At the end here there was the tremendously funny sight of Didier Deschamps being given the bumps by his players, still stern and stiff and frowning as he flew high into the air, as though considering bringing on a third defensive midfielder even at the moment of his ultimate personal ascent.
Some will suggest that, even when they were scoring four here and in Kazan, this France team never truly found its deepest attacking gears. What drove them on was Deschamps's will, his preoccupation with shape and squad combinations.
In Antoine Griezmann's set-piece expertise, Paul Pogba's easy craft and Kylian Mbappe's extreme qualities of simply being like Kylian Mbappe France had enough controlled fantasy whenever their adversaries proved signs of resistance. A brief term here about Mbappe. Blimey. Whoah. Cripes. Actually that is three. But you get the idea.
What are we going to do with this kid? He is simply irresistible , not just a pure, brilliantly fearless talent, with a genuine sprinter's technique that allows him to glide away in the smallest of spaces. He is also a exhilaration to watch, a footballer of real charm and warmth, who still seems to be having the most wonderful day, playing with friends in the middle of all that epic-scale tension.
Early on Mbappe played as an auxiliary right-back. Later he changed up a gear and became a traumatic prospect for Croatia's left side, covering the ground like a pond-skater, barely transgressing the surface tension. Ultimately he scored the fourth in France's 4-2 win, lashing a right-footed shot low into the corner with casually perfect technique. In between France were never truly on top but were still somehow always on top.
Croatia had more possession and more shots. France led 2-1 at half-time through an own aim and a debatable VAR penalty.
At which point this squad pulled itself up to its full height and simply eased away, And so for the second time in a row we have a world champion team from a prosperous western European nation whose progression through the tournament has been a matter of systems-efficiency be included with controlled assaulting flair.
Deschamps always had a golden ticket here, the greatest harvest of playing talent anywhere, tribute to the depth of the methods and structures of Clairefontaine and its 11 satellite academies.
There are other things, too. This is a nation that has always had a wider respect for the academic and the scholarly, and where even football coach-and-fours are promoted based on the results of intellect and methods, with little trace of the” practical human” template; the idea that only playing the game can bestow authority.
The world has moved towards the French here. Elite football is increasingly a matter of prep and method and planning, the ability of players to learn and adapt and make their own decisions.
France demonstrated these qualities right through this tournament, keeping to their structures, always seeming to have an extra gear. Even the most grating cliches often turn out to have a perverse kind of truth. And perhaps football really did come home at a World Cup won by the cradle of current European talent and by a nation that gave us this fun, thrilling, enduringly fine global beano in the first place.
