Convention plays a big part in football. There’s the convention that settled starting XIs help winning teams build momentum, the convention that experience really matters at major tournaments and, perhaps above all, the convention that head coaches are best off saying nothing remotely controversial.
The good news from Basel is that, in Andries Jonker and Laurent Bonadei, the Netherlands and France possess two managers who pour scorn on unwritten norms and treat received wisdoms with suspicion.
