Le Graët reveals 48-hour rift that nearly strained his relationship with Deschamps

A joke about France’s team composition was enough to create a two-day rift between Noël Le Graët and Didier Deschamps, the former French Football Federation president reveals in an interview with Ouest-France.

Le Graët recounts the scene with amusement: when Deschamps submitted his intended starting eleven to him before a match, the executive allowed himself an ironic piece of advice — “You should line up a fourth defensive midfielder…” The jab, which targeted the selector’s sometimes overly cautious tactics, did not go down well. “For forty-eight hours, he held it against me,” Le Graët confesses, with a hint of mischief.

The anecdote illustrates Deschamps’ uncompromising character, known for not letting criticism slide, even when disguised as humour. It also says something about the exceptional longevity of their partnership: fourteen years of collaboration between the selector and the man who appointed him to the role in 2012, with, inevitably, a few frictions along the way.

“We were lucky. In football, maintaining good relations for that long is not common,” acknowledges Le Graët, removed from the FFF presidency in January 2023 after a dozen years at its head. Despite this episode and other disagreements that remained hidden, the two men maintained a complicity that the former executive himself presents as rare in the sport.

Didier Deschamps is to step down as France selector after the 2026 World Cup, following fourteen years in charge of the Blues.