ARLINGTON, Texas -- And so it's over. It's over for France after a tournament that saw them enter as favorites and keep that mantle until Tuesday afternoon in Jerry Jones' cavernous lair, when they went behind for the first time at this FIFA World Cup and never recovered, eventually being roundly defeated 2-0 by Spain.
It's over for Didier Deschamps after 14 years, 184 games, three major tournament finals (two World Cups and one European Championship) plus the UEFA Nations League.
It's a funny old game. He came within a Randal Kolo Muani miss of becoming the second coach in history to win two World Cups (to add to the one he won as a player). And now, after a hideous performance that saw his guys -- especially Les Bleus' vaunted front four -- cobble together 0.04 xG in the first 64 minutes of football, most France fans are glad he's gone and can't wait to usher in the Zinedine Zidane era.
- World Cup favorites France unravel as Spain book spot in final with ease
- Player ratings: Mbappé gets 4/10 in World Cup semifinal no-show
- Why England vs. Argentina is World Cup's best, most chaotic rivalry
France were, by some distance, the most top-to-bottom talented side at the World Cup. You can go out to Spain -- who aren't far behind -- that's not the issue. You just can't do it with such a whimpering, milquetoast performance, outplayed in every aspect of the game.
It's the third time in three years that Luis de la Fuente bested Deschamps after the 2024 Euro semifinal, the 2025 Nations League (at one point Spain were 5-1 up, it finished 5-4) and now this. Either he is Deschamps' bespectacled, bald, bearded kryptonite or the France boss really doesn't do learning curves, because somehow his team managed to get worse against Spain each time.
The frustrating thing is that you knew there was a high probability the game would unfold as it did. Spain were going to play a possession game and maneuver the ball around to create chances. The main question was whether France were going to adapt to them and try to counter them, either by pressing or by adding a midfielder (since, as Kylian Mbappé pointed out, it was two vs. three in midfield), or whether they would just play their own game and let Spain worry about them instead.
Deschamps chose the latter option and paid a dear price. And while it's easy to second-guess, it shouldn't be a surprise. When you have the more talented players, you make the opposition adapt to you, not the other way around. It's pretty much a rule in any team sport.
Much of Deschamps' success as a manager -- and his track record is, in fact, enviable -- is down to following conventional wisdom: Keep the players happy and morale high, keep the tactics simple and let your talent do the rest. It worked for him as a player when he won the World Cup in 1998 alongside Zidane, Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry, and it delivered results as a coach in 2018 and 2022.
The approach itself is grounded in the belief that in this low-scoring sport, excessive tactical tinkering can do more harm than good. It's not that uncommon.
The problems arise when your opponent denies you the two things every talented player needs to make a difference: the ball (because they have possession, not you) and the space (because they're pressing you and denying you room to run behind). Without the ball and without space, Michael Olise becomes only marginally more effective than Michael Scott.
That's when you need to adjust. And that simply hasn't been Deschamps' strength. Ever. Even his changes -- the ball-playing Manu Koné for Adrien Rabiot and Désiré Doué for Bradley Barcola -- were predictable. As footballing moves, they were the equivalent of predictive text on your phone.
On a good day, it's reassuring and allows your team to keep its shape. On a bad day, like Tuesday, it prolongs the agony.
Two sides of the same coin. Like his loyalty to certain players, Rabiot above all, but also Olise, who was having a nightmare. Classic double-edged sword.
The very tools that brought him unparalleled success as an international manager also proved to be Deschamps' undoing, just when he had his most talented squad.
Will it be different with Zidane?
We can only speculate. His three UEFA Champions League titles and two LaLigas looked great on his résumé, but then you remember that Zidane hasn't worked at all in five years and his last title was in 2020. Then there's the fact that the only place he has ever worked is Real Madrid, which is pretty much unlike any other gig in the world. Yes, he had the benefit of coaching superstars in the biggest sporting fishbowl around, and he showed he could motivate them and push the right buttons. But that's at club level, where you see guys every day in training and where, if you have a problem with a player, you ask the club to get you another guy to replace him. Those are luxuries an international coach doesn't have.
Because Zidane eschewed fancy tactics at the Bernabéu and was Deschamps' longtime teammate with France and Juventus, the temptation is to assume he'll be, broadly, like his predecessor. It's not a bad thing, Tuesday's failure notwithstanding. But it would be a better thing if Zidane moved along the learning curve a little quicker than Deschamps, recognizing that, in certain situations, you can't just send your best players out there, ask them to do their thing and expect to win because you've motivated them and they are better than the opposition.
Sometimes you have to realize that balance matters, that the other guys are trying to stop you, that less can be more. Zidane should know this. After all, he won a World Cup with Stéphane Guivarc'h as his center forward. (Then again, so did Deschamps, who was on that team too.)
The biggest takeaway for Zidane, assuming he was watching, is that teamwork and the collective can trump individual talent, especially when the gap in technical ability isn't huge.
He has had a lot of time to study this France side, he'll know everything there is to know about them, and he'll have the benefit of one of the deepest pools of attacking talent around. And if he even just matches Deschamps' achievements, he'll be a success.