There’s no sense that France are an improving team, and it may be that they don’t need to be. With the players they have, they care capable of winning any game. But there remains the sense that they are not as good a team as they should be nor of what team they are trying to be, or want to be.
There is a lack of dynamism about France under Didier Deschamps that good passing sides can exploit, and the quality of their link-up play is not as sharp as it should be. Of course, there are players who did not play or start tonight who will make them better – Mbappe, Aurelien Tchouameni – but there’s a lack of fluency about it that feels endemic not specific.