France met Norway in Foxborough on Friday night with Didier Deschamps back in France for his mother’s funeral and Guy Stéphan running the team from the sideline. The World Cup group-stage match was played under the weight of that absence before kickoff, even as Kylian Mbappé was named to start for France.
The game arrived on the third and last day of the group stage, which is why every selection choice mattered. France lined up in a 4-2-3-1 with Maignan, Koundé, Upamecano, Lacroix, T. Hernandez, Koné, Tchouaméni, Dembélé, Olise, Doué and Mbappé, while Norway also rotated and left Erling Haaland, Martin Ödegaard and Alexander Sorloth out of the starting XI. Marcus Thuram and William Saliba were on the match sheet for France but would not take part.
Deschamps left responsibility to Stéphan, his assistant of 14 years, after returning to France on Friday for the funeral of Ginette Deschamps, who died on Tuesday. A minute of silence was to be observed before kickoff, and the scene in Foxborough underlined how much this match sat between football duty and personal loss. Mbappé’s start carried another layer too: he was set to become the fifth France player to reach 17 World Cup appearances.
Norway’s decision was just as revealing. Stale Solbakken said on beIN Sports that his side had chosen a different team to give fresher players a chance after a difficult match against Sénégal and little recovery time. That left the visitors with Selvik, Aursnes, Östigard, Falchener, Björkan, Aasgaard, Berg, Thorsvtedt, Bobb, Strand Larsen and Schjelderup in the starting side, a lineup that looked built as much for management as for risk.
France had another pressure point hanging over it. The team had not won its third group-stage match in a major competition for 20 years, with the last such victory coming against Togo at the 2006 World Cup, 2-0. That record gave this match a sharper edge than a routine group finale, because a rotated side, a bereaved coach and a heavily changed Norway all met at once. What came next for France was less about the emotion around the bench than whether a reshuffled XI could finally end that run.
