Hugo Lloris can make history on Sunday. If France beat Argentina, he will become the first captain to lift the World Cup twice.
He was so important in the quarter-final against England and terrific in the semi against Morocco, but there is unlikely to be much written about our captain in L’Équipe this weekend.
It will all be about Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Antoine Griezmann, but Hugo… in France, we have a saying: “Un train qui arrive a l’heure”. He is like a train that arrives on time.
He might not be a legend, like Zinedine Zidane or Michel Platini, but Hugo is a respected figure in France. He is our most-capped player, has captained the national team over 100 times and the general view of him is that is so reliable in big moments.
I saw there was some talk in England before the quarter-final that Hugo is a weak link in the France team, but he has always been terrific at major tournaments.
I have known Hugo since 2008 and we are quite close. When I come to London, we usually have lunch and I know him very well. With Hugo, what you see is what you get. He is a family man. He has had the same friends since school, including his wife, Marine.
I was with Hugo the day he was stopped by police for drink-driving in 2018. I had spent the afternoon with him in Hampstead. I interviewed him, we had coffee. Later that day, he went to a restaurant with Olivier Giroud and Laurent Koscielny, they were trying to lift Laurent’s mood because he was injured and had missed the World Cup a few months earlier.
In France, of course, that incident came as a shock. Hugo is seen as like an ideal son-in-law. I know how guilty he felt, it was a bad episode for him and he promised never to do it again.
There are two faces of Hugo. There is the quiet guy, very clever, very calm. Sometimes in France, people see him as the guy who comes into the press conference the day before a game and says nothing. But the truth is, one-on-one, he is a really interesting guy.
And then there is the guy who wants to fight with Heung-min Son at half-time a few years ago, as we saw in the Amazon documentary!
He is still a goalkeeper, he is still mad, even if he hides it behind his that image of being an ideal son-in-law!
What makes him a great captain is that he always knows what to say at the right moment. Four years ago, in Russia, we saw videos from the French dressing room of Paul Pogba always speaking loudly, and sometimes the other players would say, ‘Shut up, Paul!’. With Lloris, when he speaks, everybody listens.
I think winning the World Cup made a huge difference for Hugo, because before that he resented the fact he had never won anything big.
That burden was lifted in 2018, which was important for him.
Ten months later, he was playing in the Champions League Final with Tottenham. I remember earlier he had saved a Sergio Aguero penalty against Manchester City and, like I said, he was there in the big moments on that run for Spurs under Mauricio Pochettino.
As for the feeling in France ahead of the game on Sunday, we are starting to think that everybody wants Lionel Messi to win the World Cup… apart from us!
We all know England were the better team in our quarter-final, and we were not great in the second half against Morocco. But here we are, the last obstacle between Messi and immortality.
