Football: Didier Deschamps, between shadow and light

steemvibes (9)in #steempress • 6 years ago

In a report broadcast Wednesday night, C8 shares in the footsteps of the national coach, a character as popular as discreet.

Since this summer, Didier Deschamps has strengthened his position at the French Sports Hall of Fame. First captain of a French team to raise a Champions League (1993), then a World Cup (1998) ... The victory in the World Cup in Russia , obtained in the skin of the coach twenty years after being a player, has increased the curiosity of the general public towards it.

Personality exposed, Didier Deschamps is nonetheless remained discreet, even secret, on which he is outside the green rectangle. His image of anti-star, which he has cultivated since he set foot in the world of football, is no less a central figure, if not unavoidable French football of the last two decades .

In Didier Deschamps, the secrets of a legend , written and directed by Timothée Vienne, C8 attempts to depict the portrait of the man behind the facade of the ultra-competitor. A perilous enterprise, as it still reigns today a form of omerta around him. To do this, a flock of speakers follows one another, chronologically evoking the path of DD: journalists (Grégory Schneider, Nathalie Ianetta, Jacques Vendroux , Romain Scotto), those who have evolved alongside him ( Lilian Thuram , Pascal Olmeta), those who forged it (Marcello Lippi, Rolland Courbis and Robert Navarro, his first coach) or those who accompanied him in his last great challenges (Benjamin Pavard, Blaise Matuidi). More rarely, the document gives the floor to some members of his inner circle, namely Emmanuel Darnauthandy (childhood friend) and Dominique Rouch (biographer). The former President of the Republic, François Hollande, also speaks. A cast with an enlarged prism supposed to be able to refine the reflection and not to limit it to the purely sporting aspect.

Some indiscretions, no revelations
From his childhood in the Basque country until July 15, 2018 and this second World Cup, the sporting course of DD is evoked in detail: his departure for Nantes, his complicated arrival in Marseille and his sometimes heated relationship with Bernard Tapie, then his Italian experience at Juventus and his idyll with the French team, with turbulence, however, like this traumatic elimination in the 1994 World Cup qualifiers, against Bulgaria. The difficulties at the beginning of his coaching career in Monaco and Marseille, which allowed him to apprehend a job for which he seemed programmed.

The guiding thread is dotted with rare elements that draw the personality of the man. If the winning side as well as its psychological relationship to defeat are obviously evoked, some more personal and intimate parameters are also mentioned in a chapter entitled "Secret Wounds". His taste for hunting. The meeting with his wife, Claude, from Brittany, some time after his first selection in France team. The death of his big brother in December 1987 and the consequences on the family balance. Episodes that help to understand the mental construct of the competitor Deschamps, desperate to achieve the goal, whatever the means used and the price to pay.

Nevertheless, the chronological story of the career of DD, if it has the merit of being well put together for the general public, does not reveal much novelty to the regular followers of the round ball. The shadows of the character, if they can sometimes be mentioned, are not hollowed out, whether it is his omnipotence within the French institutions, his relationship with France 98 - except Lilian Thuram, no world champion 98 is involved in the subject, not even Marcel Desailly, his "best friend" - or the OM-VA case. Didier Deschamps, "the secrets of a legend", is more like a laudative portrait of the strongman of French football, rather than a look dug on the dark side.

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