Over the summer of 2024, we got to witness the legendary Summer Olympics in Paris, France featuring the FIFA World Cup ripoff: Olympic Soccer, and the Euro Cup rematch between France and Spain.
The final event in men’s Olympic Soccer this summer was between Spain and France. Despite being hosted in Paris, the French got smoked 5-3 by the Spanish who even had the audacity to leave off their 16-year old menace who was taking a tactical break from soccer to do his homework – talk about the disrespect. I suppose it’s only fair considering the French team wasn’t carried on the back of the legendary French soccer player, Mbappe, like they’re used to.
After losing a game to Spain at the Euro’s this year, I thought for sure that in Paris, the French national team would take advantage of their home pitch; how disappointed I was to say the least. The main disappointment stated by the French media, was that the French team did not take advantage of the fact that they were playing in Paris. I would be inclined to agree with this as the French really should’ve upped their cheating game after already losing to the Spanish earlier this year.
What the French team should have done differently is all down to their tactics. First of all, the French should have taken the “match outcome tinkering” (not to be confused with cheating of course…) out of the Italian playbook which first debuted in the World Cup of 1934. This strategy was used by the strongman, Bennito Mussolini, who had the World Cup of 1934 hosted in Rome, Italy.
What’s surprising even more is that the French refused to dig into trenches despite the fact that they had every chance to before the game started. Had the French team not refused to ignore the obvious fact that Spain was about to blitz through the team’s defenders by flanking through the Ardenne- I mean through the sides to the goal, then the French would have easily dragged this game out way longer than anyone could have previously imagined. While the French team did indeed drag the game out until the 120th minute, they lost in the last second after Spain snuck a goal in while already being up by one, which must have been a punch in the stomach for the already depleted Frenchmen.
Instead of the quite frankly brilliant tactics mentioned above, a 84 year personal favorite of the French team was used instead: the white flag. While France was busy removing the blue and red from their flag, the Spanish were busy waving their first trophy in a month. To make the defeat even more embarrassing to France is that according to The Guardian “Sergio Camello, the substitute whose two goals settled the game, was only on standby at the start of the Olympics.” After betting two pencils on the French team, I was devastated when they predictably gave up at the very end.
