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Griezmann’s assists for Aurelien Tchouameni and Giroud take his profession worldwide help tally to twenty-eight, surpassing Thierry Henry as France’s main provider of targets.
However is the reinvention of Griezmann as a bona fide midfield participant that has most caught the attention right here in Qatar.
Griezmann made his title as an attacking participant, both from the wing or simply off the entrance line, however for France right here he has performed as a real quantity 8.
And whereas English eyes in the course of the quarter-final had been rightly skilled on Mbappe, Giroud, and Ousmane Dembele, it was Griezmann who flitted between the strains, darting this fashion and that, threading passes between defence and assault and proving to be the quarter-final’s excellent participant.
Griezmann’s transfer to midfield was partly born out of necessity.
With Paul Pogba, N’Golo Kante and Corentin Tolisso all lacking, coach Didier Deschamps wanted a novel answer.
In Tchouameni and Adrien Rabiot, Deschamps had two gamers with power and vigour, whereas the entrance trio of Mbappe, Giroud (and initially Karim Benzema) and Dembele carried greater than sufficient objective menace.
However who would knit all of it collectively?
For Deschamps, the reply was proper in entrance of him.
Griezmann scored 4 targets as France received the final World Cup in Russia, however has taken to his new, deeper position like a duck to water.
Deschamps, to his credit score, has at all times seen Griezmann’s potential as a midfield conductor, a metronomic tempo setter with a left foot to die for.
The 31-year-old’s contact, steadiness, imaginative and prescient, and poise have made this ominous-looking French outfit tick, and the way in which he strikes the ball via midfield, all slide rule passes and exact geometry, is a pleasure.
Griezmann’s David Silva-like reinvention as a correct midfielder may properly be certainly one of Deschamps’s most interesting creations.
The coach has performed the Atletico star prior to now 72 matches straight for Les Bleus.
He’s France’s beating coronary heart and if Les Bleus are holding aloft the World Cup trophy on the finish of his 74th straight match, it’ll be largely all the way down to Griezmann.