In ceding the reins to Mbappé, Olise and Dembélé, France look as under control as ever

When a cat has cornered a mouse and appears to be toying with its prey, it isn’t actually being cruel so much as it is planning and practicing all the ways in which it may finally kill it off. We are, it almost goes without saying, speaking about France at the 2026 World Cup here. Les Bleus have scored at least three goals in their last four games and, each time, looked an awful lot like they might have run the score up further, if only they hadn’t run out of time, energy or interest. And yet France , extraordinarily, also seem to still be very much working out what they even are at this World Cup. Like the student in art school who plainly has more talent in his pinky toe than the rest of his class can muster in the aggregate, but who is still tinkering with the basics of form and style. Didier Deschamps’ France are going through a radical transformation before our very eyes. In his 14 years in charge, Deschamps built rigid and conservative sides, no matter how much talent they teemed with. These dour editions were managed and controlled to within an inch of their lives. They were careful teams, who engineered victories rather than earning them through their guile and their gifts. You can hardly argue with the results. A final at Euro 2016. A World Cup title in 2018. A final lost on penalties four years later. Deschamps, who lost his mother last week, will step down after this World Cup, but he seems determined to do things differently this time around. …