Coming into the World Cup, they were the favourites on paper. Three group stage matches and one knockout fixture later, having hammered 13 goals while conceding just two, France have proved they are overwhelming favourites on the pitch as well.
Didier Deschamps’ men have been so wildly creative, so brutally ruthless, and so perfectly locked into each other’s vision that their win margins — 3-0 against a Sweden made to look pedestrian and hapless in the round of 32, for example — seem utterly insufficient to capture the true extent of their dominance. Sixnil would have been closer; they hit the post thrice, and Kylian Mbappé had another ruled out for offside by a quarter of an inch.
