With France among several nations tipped to win the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a lot of eyes will be on how Arsenal defender William Saliba performs in his first major tournament.
Named in the final 26-man squad as a reward for his brilliant form during his loan spell with Marseille last season as well as a very encouraging start to his career in north London, the 21-year-old has already joined up with his international colleagues in preparation for their Group D opener against Australia next week.
Whether Saliba is named in the starting line-up for that fixture remains to be seen. After being hauled off at half-time - along with Real Madrid midfielder Eduardo Camavinga - in the 2-0 defeat against Denmark back in September, France manager Didier Deschamps did hint at inexperience being an issue.
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"I don’t think it’s a shipwreck, we also had a lot of chances but we were ineffective, we made some errors when playing out from the back," Deschamps told TF1 after the game. "It’s a young French side, where the majority of the players don’t have experience at the very highest level.
"It’s not a question of formations, but when you have four corners and a Danish player is left alone each time, you can play with three, five or twelve at the back, it doesn’t change a thing. There’s no need to worry, the fact that the players with international experience are coming back will do us good.
Team selections in defence aside, despite Christopher Nkunku's withdrawal, Kylian Mbappe, Karim Benzema, Ousmane Dembele, Antoine Griezmann and Olivier Giroud still remain and Les Bleus should have enough firepower to reach the round of 16 stage either as group winners or as runners-up.
However, it may not be as straightforward as that because history has a tendency of repeating itself. France won the World Cup on home soil 24 years ago after beating Brazil 3-0 in the final, but the defence of their crown four years later in Japan and South Korea left many in shock.
Crashing out at the group stage, finishing bottom of the table, without a win and zero goals scored after losing to Senegal and Denmark as well as drawing with Uruguay, it was the first time the World Cup holders had been eliminated at the first round since Brazil in 1966.
This trend has occurred three more times since, with Italy, Spain and more recently Germany all falling foul to the World Cup champions' curse in 2010, 2014 and 2018 respectively. This means that the tournament's last four winners from Europe have all failed to progress past the group stage in the following World Cup.
France go into this World Cup as the defending champions having won their second title in Russia four years ago and as mentioned above, they are expected to have a strong tournament. But they have been drawn in the same group as Denmark - as was the case in 2002 - so could history repeat itself?
It does seem unlikely given the quality in the squad, although this pattern proves nothing is guaranteed and should the World Cup champions' curse continue this year then Saliba will make an early return to Arsenal as France's last group game is on November 30, so he could be part of the warm-weather training camp in Dubai.
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