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France head coach Didier Deschamps on July 14, 2026 in Dallas, Texas
Credit: Rico Brouwer/Soccrates/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- France’s head coach Didier Deschamps questioned a World Cup referee after his team’s loss to Spain in the semifinal on Tuesday, July 14
- Deschamps said he’s aware he could “look like a sore loser because we lost” before asking, “Is the referee up to the task of officiating a semifinal?”
- “I have nothing against the referee tonight, but ask yourselves the question,” Deschamps said
France’s head coach Didier Deschamps took issue with a referee after his team’s loss to Spain in their World Cup semifinal.
The French men’s national team was shutout in their semifinal match against Spain on Tuesday, July 14, where the Spanish team scored two goals — the first on a penalty kick for Mikel Oyarzabal — and advanced to the final against the winner of Argentina and England’s match on Wednesday. Following the defeat, Deschamps, 57, slammed the official who called the foul on France’s Lucas Digne.
“If I say anything, I’ll look like a sore loser because we lost,” Deschamps said, according to ESPN. “But I ask you: is the referee up to the task of officiating a semifinal? There’s the penalty, but that’s not all; it adds to everything else. I have nothing against the referee tonight, but ask yourselves the question.”
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Didier Deschamps on July 14, 2026 in Dallas, Texas
Credit: Rico Brouwer/Soccrates/Getty
Deschamps also said, “It’s not just the penalty in question, it’s an accumulation of things,” per Yahoo Sports.
The French head coach, who has been with the team for 14 years, also said of the loss: “Compared with them, in our passing combinations and sequences, they’re also excellent at reading the game and intercepting passes. We couldn’t find solutions. I don’t want to say that our attacking and technical expression simply disappeared on its own. That’s normally one of our strengths.”
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Deschamps said he was “not going to condemn everything we did or erase what we’ve accomplished,” and added: “But I’ll repeat it: in a match like this, against a team like Spain, you have to be at your absolute maximum. France wasn’t at that level tonight.”
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Didier Deschamps on July 14, 2026 in Dallas, Texas
Credit: Rico Brouwer/Soccrates/Getty
“To have any hope, we needed to be at our best,” he said, adding, “Unfortunately, we weren’t.”
According to Sports Illustrated, Deschamps added, “There is obviously a lot of disappointment. The players are devastated because we had high ambitions.”
Read the original article on People
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