Antoine Griezmann: France’s tireless presence – pushing them towards World Cup glory

A player not like other players at this World Cup, Antoine Griezmann's preparations for it weren't like others either.

A contractual dispute with parent club Barcelona ensured the 31-year-old was restricted to playing just 29 minutes per match in the first-half of the season. A minute more and Atletico Madrid would owe their rivals €40m.

If you were to design a workload for a midfielder on the wrong side of 30 going into a mid-season World Cup, you can imagine it would look something like that. Yet if Griezmann's build-up to this tournament saw him restricted to the periphery, his role for France once in Qatar could scarcely have been more central.

Born in the commune of Macon in 1991, Griezmann boasts the quirk of being a French star footballer who has never played for a French team. Dismissed by many growing up for his slight frame and smallness of stature, it was instead Spanish side Real Sociedad who gave him his first chance. He made his competitive debut in 2009. By April the following year he had signed a five-year contract with a €30m release clause. Wearing the No 7 and long-sleeved shirt of his “idol” David Beckham, his star was soon on the rise. Atletico came calling in the summer of 2014, a month after his first international goal for France. A Europa League win and Uefa Super Cup would compensate for losing a Champions League final to rivals Real, but an even bigger stage awaited and, 18 months after declaring Madrid his “home” and signing a new deal, he contentiously moved to Barcelona for €120m in one of the most expensive transfers in the history of the game.

Griezmann insisted his decision wasn't motivated by money or trophies, but by a desire to experience “a new style of play and new philosophies”. It didn’t wash, Atletico supporters defacing his plaque at their home stadium on the same day he was unveiled in Catalunya. It’s far from his first off-field controversy, either. A picture of Griezmann dressed as a Harlem Globetrotter with darkened skin and an afro wig in 2017 sparked outcry while the emergence of a video of him appearing to laugh at racially derogatory comments made by teammate Ousmane Dembele in 2021 have seen him lose a personal endorsement deal with Konami and forced an apology to Barcelona’s chief shirt sponsor, Rakuten. Griezmann himself apologised after both incidents and said after the latter: “I have always been committed against any form of discrimination.” Seen by many as a symbol of a once great club’s even greater decline, his stay with Barca lasted just two years. He returned to Atletico on loan in 2021 before a permanent deal and a cessation of the curtailing of his playing minutes was finally struck ahead of this World Cup.

A player who has excelled under Diego Simeone in two different spells is used to hard work but it has been especially notable in Qatar: in France’s last-16 match with Poland nobody ran further than Griezmann’s 11.3km, and he was everywhere in their quarter-final and semi-final wins over England and Morocco too, again topping the charts for pressures and passes. Griezmann’s three assists are a joint-leading total at this World Cup, and his expected assists (a measure of the quality of chances created) is a tournament-high 2.9, well clear of other renowned creators like Lionel Messi and Bruno Fernandes.

Yet on top of his creative powers and relentless running, Griezmann has evolved into a more complete footballer too. In doing so he has become a one-man solution to two of France’s biggest problems, helping compensate for the absence of the injured Paul Pogba and N’Golo Kante, which left France lacking a midfield, and enabling Didier Deschamps to cram in a quartet of attackers, with Kylian Mbappe joined by Olivier Giroud and Dembele. Dembele has helped Griezmann out, sometimes dropping deeper to assume more defensive duties, but essentially Deschamps has trusted in his talisman to show positional discipline. Griezmann has played in France’s last 72 internationals, a run going back five-and-a-half years, but rarely like this.

The numbers paint a picture of how his sphere of influence has shifted. Four years ago en route to winning the 2018 World Cup, Griezmann took more touches in the final third than the middle or defensive thirds; here in Qatar his most frequent area on the ball is the middle third. He records fewer penalty area touches per match, dribbles less, takes fewer shots and scores fewer goals; yet he now makes more tackles and interceptions, and takes significantly more touches overall.

Griezmann has gone from potent No 10 to box-to-box midfielder; from goal threat to conductor, string-puller, even occasionally France’s deep tempo-setter. It is a shift he has shown occasionally at Atletico too and it could be where his future lies. There are shades of Luka Modric in the ability to receive the ball in tight spaces in his own half, the endless energy, the tenacity when an opponent is near.

All this is to his credit: as one narcissistic captain has shown in recent weeks, it takes genuine humility to accept your changing strengths and refine your game accordingly. “He’s playing a different role but he loves it,” Deschamps said this week. “His number one role is not ball-winning but he always puts the team above his personal goals. With his left foot he’s so gifted, he can create chances for teammates at any time. He’s extremely hard-working, he’s been a top player for 10 years now. And like all world-class players, he’s at his best in the biggest games.”

The 2018 tournament-winning platform of Kante and Pogba would likely have started this World Cup had they been fully fit, but more by accident than design Deschamps has stumbled upon a midfield trio who complement each other’s strengths, a blend of experience and youth, of precocious talent and established nous. The 22-year-old Aurelien Tchouameni is the guard, the deep-lying prompter; 27-year-old Adrien Rabiot is the roving nuisance who harries and harasses, who pinches the ball from an opponent’s toes and forays forwards too, under the cover provided by France’s bright attacking lights.

And then there’s Griezmann, flitting across the pitch in subtle bursts of influence. Mbappe and Giroud have got the goals in Qatar but Griezmann has been France’s outstanding player. Lionel Messi'’s undying quest to finally win a World Cup has understandably been central in the build-up to this final. But if his lifelong bid to win the trophy he wants more than any other is to get a fitting end, he will first have to outlast a tireless Griezmann.