Patrick Vieira’s eyes mist over as he talks about what it took to win the World Cup with France in 1998. He touches upon Zinedine Zidane’s brilliance but the theme he keeps coming back to is togetherness: not so much liberté, egalité, fraternité as unité, humilité, fraternité.
Casting his mind back to that glorious summer, he talks of a team swept along on a tide of national fervour as tournament hosts. But he also points to the individuals within the group — Didier Deschamps, Marcel Desailly, Laurent Blanc, Lilian Thuram, Bixente Lizarazu, Youri Djorkaeff — and how, when they rallied together, they became far greater than the sum of their parts.
“Before the tournament, no one believed in us,” the former France midfielder says. “There was no belief from the people or the media that we would have a good World Cup. But once we came out of the group stage, we started to feel the passion and the belief from the fans. Even when we were at Clairefontaine (French football’s base near Paris), just watching on the TV, because we were in our bubble, we could feel the belief from the people.
“Everything gelled together and we managed to build that momentum. Luck was sometimes on our side — the golden goal we scored against Paraguay (in the last 16), the (quarter-final) penalty shootout against Italy — but in those moments, it was also about that team spirit, that togetherness. Arriving at the quarter-final and the semi-finals, it was like: ‘There is only one way to go — to the end’.”
They beat Brazil so comprehensively in the final that the closing stages, in which Vieira came off the bench to set up his Arsenal team-mate Emmanuel Petit to wrap up a 3-0 victory in added time, felt like a procession.
“I remember Deschamps, Thuram, in the dressing room giving the feeling that nothing could happen to us because you had the positive energy around you and you knew that the performance would be happening,” he says. “In the final against Brazil, I felt our teeth were longer than theirs. I think we wanted it more. I couldn’t see how we were not going to win.”
France’s victorious players celebrate World Cup success in 1998, with Patrick Vieira in their midst (Richard Sellers/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)
That French idiom about having long teeth — les dents longues — can have negative connotations about a person’s ambitious streak. But Vieira means it in the best possible way. “Players who had experience and that nastiness,” he says with a smile. “Warrior players who would pull their sleeves up and just go for it.”
Naturally, the conversation drifts to the present and the question of whether today’s France team, having lost on penalties to Argentina in the most recent World Cup final four years ago, has the quality, the mentality and the togetherness to go one step further this time and emulate their predecessors’ triumphs in 1998 and 2018?
A pause.
“They have, certainly, the individual talent to go to the end,” Vieira says. “But individual talent is not going to be enough. I think the biggest challenge for the French team is how they will gel together, (whether) the togetherness will be strong enough to help them go through those difficult periods and how (Kylian) Mbappe, as a captain, as a leader, will be the positive guy to bring the team together.
“When you have so much talent in the team, the difficulty is that they may think that all of them can win the game by themselves. That can be a danger for the team. So I believe and hope that Didier (Deschamps, now the manager), with his experience and the profile of coaching and the player that he was, will manage to bring them together and to make them understand that they have to put their talent for the service of the team. If they do that, they will have a good chance.”
Didier Deschamps (left) must foster a togetherness in the France squad with Kylian Mbappe as their leader (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
It points to a degree of circumspection about France’s prospects as they prepare to kick off their campaign against Senegal at MetLife Stadium, just outside New York City, on Tuesday. The attacking talent in their squad — particularly Real Madrid’s Mbappe, Michael Olise of Bayern Munich and the Paris Saint-Germain trio of Ousmane Dembele, Desire Doue and Bradley Barcola — is the envy of every coach in the tournament. But it presents Deschamps with a series of dilemmas.
Vieira ponders the dilemma from his own perspective as a coach, having had spells in charge at New York City, Nice, Crystal Palace, Strasbourg and Genoa.
“Is Didier going to play a 4-2-3-1 with four forwards?” he wonders. “Or is he going to sacrifice one of them to put in one (more) midfielder and go in a 4-3-3?”
As France coach, Deschamps has usually favoured 4-2-3-1. In their final pre-World Cup warm-up match against Northern Ireland last week, he had Aurelien Tchouameni and Adrien Rabiot in midfield with Olise on the right wing, Doue on the left and Dembele in the No 10 position behind Mbappe.
Olise scored a hat-trick in a 3-1 win but Vieira is convinced that the way forward for this team is to play him in another role.
“I would put Olise more central because, with the quality of his passing and the quality of him getting onto the ball, I think he can create and score goals,” Vieira says. “I would put Dembele as a false nine, with Olise just behind him.
“I would put Mbappe on the left and Doue on the right, and I would go with two holding midfielders — either Rabiot and Tchouameni or (N’Golo) Kante and Tchouameni. They have players in the back four who are really strong in one-against-ones, so yes, I would put two holding midfielders and one more forward.”
So, Mbappe on the left?
“Yes,” he says, “but the tactical aspect I would have is that I would allow Mbappe and Dembele to change positions and rotate. Dembele does that at times at Paris Saint-Germain. So those two players, I would allow them to change position, but I would keep Olise as a No 10 and I would put Doue, more disciplined, on the right side.”
Does he think Deschamps, his former midfield partner, will go for something similar?
“I don’t think so,” Vieira laughs. “I think Didier might sacrifice one of the front players and go with three midfielders, because he wants a different balance.”
Vieira feels Mbappe is integral to France’s hopes — not just where he is deployed but the way he operates within that system.
“Mbappe has to be really disciplined (…) to help his team-mates,” Vieira says. “He has to embrace the different aspects and show the example, to close down the opposition and to work with the team. If he can do that, he will bring the players with him and that will allow him to perform.”
The 27-year-old did that to outstanding effect in the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, but the 2024 European Championship and, indeed, the previous Euros three years earlier brought frustration. “For the top players, the biggest names, there is always that expectation that they carry the nation on their shoulders,” Vieira says. “But if you carry it by yourself, thinking you can do everything by yourself, it becomes really hard.
“If we talk about 1998; yes, Zidane was there but Deschamps was there, Desailly was there, Blanc was there. So many great players. If the players are expecting Mbappe to resolve all the issues — or if Mbappe thinks he can resolve all the issues — then that would be wrong. It’s about the team, the togetherness, that spirit.
“If you look at Argentina in 2022; of course, they had Lionel Messi, who is a special talent, and of course he scored those important goals that you need, but around him, you had the team that worked hard and worked so well together, and was so disciplined on the field. And when you have that, that is what allows the special talent to shine.
Patrick Vieira worked with Michael Olise at Crystal Palace (Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty Images)
“That is what the French team has to be. They will be good going forward because of the individual talent they have but it is about how they will defend well together when they don’t have the ball. Are they all going to have the same commitment? Are they all prepared to work hard for each other? That is, for me, something that they will have to do really well.”
That is the balance Vieira and his team-mates struck so well in 1998 and again in a victorious Euros campaign two years later.
Their willingness to fight for each other, to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, is what allowed the individual quality in that French side to flourish.
They had talent in abundance but they also had the “long teeth”, the fighting spirit and the togetherness that every World Cup-winning team needs.