Is Antoine Griezmann France’s most important player?

Quarter-final against England.

Antoine Griezmann receives the ball on the left with just a quarter left to play. He sent in a perfectly balanced cross and Olivier Giroud headed in. The match is decided (obviously even Harry Kane would be able to miss a penalty).

Semifinal against Morocco.

Antoine Griezmann had central defender Jawad El Yamiq close at hand, but deceived him with a clever interchange move. He opens up the Moroccan defense – which so far has not conceded a goal from its opponents (on the contrary, an own goal against Canada) during the championship. A few sequences later, Theo Hernández scored the opening goal.

But it is as if Griezmann were no longer the protagonist, he was no longer at the center as before.

In the summer of 2016, it was finally time for the championship the French were waiting: CE at home.

After a series of disappointments from the victory in the EC 2000, a new golden story had to be written. France was a team with Dimitri Payet, Paul Pogba and Olivier Giroud. Above all, a team with Antoine Griezmann.

Maybe Griezmann was on top that summer. He had just played in the Champions League final with Atlético Madrid, he had scored 32 goals in 54 club games that season.

Now he had to lead his France to gold, and hardly anyone could blame him for not trying. He scored six goals and was awarded player of the tournament.

It was only an anonymous Portuguese striker named Éder who decided the final. Perhaps Griezmann would have won the Ballon d’Or if that match had ended differently.

Antoine Griezmann was born in French Mâcon in the early 1990s. He started playing football in the local city team, and eventually went around for trial training in the academies of elite teams.

But it was so small.

He was the nobleman of Olympique Lyon, of Auxerre, Saint-Étienne, Montpellier and Sochaux. But it so happened that talent scouts from Spain’s Real Sociedad visited a tournament where Griezmann played.

Sure, that was a nice move as a teenager, but La Real (from the Basque San Sebastián) is basically the closest you can get to France on Spanish soil. Furthermore, Griezmann initially remained on the French side. From the border town of Bayonne, he then went in the evening to train with the La Real youth team.

His A-team debut at his home stadium Anoeta came in the autumn of 2009, and 52 goals in 202 games later, Griezmann moved on to top club Atlético Madrid in the summer of 2014.

After the final disappointment of 2016 he made the French take new steps, in view of the World Cup that was imminent in Russia.

At the same time, Griezmann’s impressive efforts in a pragmatic Atlético Madrid by Diego Simeone had been echoed in Football Europe.

He himself thought it was a good idea to make a mini-documentary (in which Barcelona central defender Gerard Piqué was involved) to announce his continued presence at the club, before leaving the following summer for Barcelona.

Documentary summer 2018 France has become the best in the world. Griezmann was fundamental in another championship, but something has changed.

Kylian Mbappé had introduced himself.

It didn’t improve that Griezmann’s move to Barcelona would prove to be a huge misstep. The Frenchman, who has always liked having a striker next to him, realized that in Barcelona there was a certain Lionel Messi who had already held the position he himself loves so much.

A failed CE (summer 2021) later, Griezmann arrived at the World Cup in Qatar (again as an Atlético Madrid player) as a questionable global star. Maybe he wasn’t even worthy of the title anymore.

But the national team was – despite everything – always something different from the club team. Sure, the French have the greatest striker in the world in Mbappé and more outside the box players like Ousmane Dembélé and Kingsley Coman, but it’s the centre-line that defines the team.

National team captain Didier Deschamps always fields Hugo Lloris, Raphaël Varane and Olivier Giroud. He always starts Antoine Griezmann, who hasn’t lost a match for his country since 2017 and is now on 73 consecutive games.

The technical and lopsided exterior who broke into the Basque Country is far away. In his role as liaison player behind Olivier Giroud during the World Cup in Qatar, Griezmann appeared rather as something of a hybrid between an attacking problem solver and a regular box-to-box midfielder.

He collected balls, made sliding tackles and won free-kicks. The Guardian noted Varane’s description of teammate:

– Has the ability to make others play.

Griezmann will not take over football like Mbappé. He won’t get everything like Aurélien Tchouaméni and he won’t have the title of French top scorer like Giroud.

But perhaps Antoine Griezmann of little Mâcon is the most important player Blues. He’s the one who makes the team work. Maybe on Sunday he will run, pass and face the Frenchman on his way to another World Cup gold.