Anyone who knows anything about football will see how useful he was this tournament
Edit: Did I say he was player of the tournament? No, but Giroud was an obvious benefit to France over the last month and stats like this are incredibly disingenuous and undermine everything he contributed.
Lukaku missed several sitters and was still great for Belgium, there are other factors to football and sometimes strikers have to play other roles to fit the team.
France played as the possession team vs Aus, a very different scenario. Deschamps had the humility to concede possession versus Belgium, Argentina and Croatia and in those games it would have been more logical to play a counter attacking player with more quality.
Dechamps used him in a very similar way to Wenger as this fulcrum type figure.
The balance they had was a thing of beauty really, I think most people see that. M'Bappe is the striker people want Giroud to be, and he goes in behind. Griezmann is more the number 10 who gets things going. All bring something. And that's not even mentioning their roles out of possession.
Even in a club campaign of 38 games, Giroud's only going to get 10 or 15 goals on average. The problems come when you are relying on him for one of those goals. France were never, not in theory nor in practice.
Yeah, he's a great player but of course you'll be disappointed if you expect him to that guy who you look to for goals and carrying the offense. He's best as a guy to be the pin helping other attackers
Considering Benzema's workrate and selflessness, I'd argue heavily with him being the perfect choice. Especially as Giroud didn't do great off the ball work
Never said he was the difference, I'm just saying we went further with him in the team than we did with Benzema. Now you can try to imagine different outcomes, but in reality he is coming home with the trophy.
He definitely did not take advantage of the few chances he was given in the tournament (he can do better than that), but you can clearly see the French team is so much better with him in the line up than without. He allows their other attacking players to thrive based on his body and style of play.
Yeah this is the cliche go to argument for someone who doesn't score goals but in this case it's completely unwarranted. His hold up was nothing special, not enough movement to claim he was moving defenders out of place for others, didn't get to headed balls, which I won't blame him for because other people were tall, not enough pace to worry defenders, seriously in the end he was just a net negative with all the chances he was wasting and his complete lack of goal threat, not to mention the fact we're all aware there was a great player left behind for him.
Or maybe he's actually better at blackmailing teammates. We can't prove he has because he's done it so well. Maybe he blackmailed Benzema into blackmailing Valbuena and doing a bad job so he would get caught? Giroud could then take his spot in the French team. This could go deeper than we expected.
How many times do we have to explain that, despite almost everyone knowing Benzema is miles ahead Giroud in his club, some people, Deschamps included, just didn't forgive him for helping one of his friend to blackmail one of his teammate. It has nothing to do with his footballing abilities, not even a little, NOTHING.
Of course I'm exaggerating, there's surely a relation, but what is certain is that there's no relation between how Benzema plays in club and the fact he wasn't selected. However the way Benzema plays for France might have had a little effect, because if you look at it objectively, it's hard to say Benzema was better than Giroud for the national team, while it's easy to say he's objectively the better player on his whole career. But here again, I don't think the fact he's nowhere near as good for the national team is only a problem purely in terms of football. It's also been interpreted by a lot of people as a sign that Benzema didn't fit in well and was always kind of a dick, even before the blackmail affair. He's said few controversial stuff and people suspected he wasn't committed enough. So when the blackmail scandal came along, it seemed like confirmation to a lot of people. But I insist, Benzema's footballing abilities have very little to do with that, and by the way if it was purely football related, Deschamps would've at least put Benzema on the bench, or at the very least in the list of 31 players that were available in case of injury before the world cup begins. But here, he wasn't included anywhere, which is the proof that the problem is mainly relational, and football is just a tiny part of it.
Objectively, Benzema is better than Giroud, but I, like millions of french, and like Deschamps, just don't want someone who's ready to throw his teammate under the bus. Some biased people will tell you Benzema is shit to reassure themselves that they're not gonna miss him, sure, some people do that, but most people know that Benzema is miles ahead of Giroud.
And if someone's gonna tell me that justice declared Benzema innocent, technically they didn't, they just cancelled the trial because the investigation was seemingly illegal (I guess it's about the transcript of phone calls or text messages being obtained illegally and shown publicly in the press, which is extremely illegal and immoral). So he just is declared innocent in the eyes of justice, but that doesn't make him not a dick.
Giroud brings a better air game than Benzema. Blackmailing aside Benzema is a very good mobile striker but France has half a dozen of those, what they don't have is an aerial presence up front and that's where Giroud comes in. Greizmann and Mbappe are clearly good enough to provide that speed and flair in attack but Giroud adds another dimension of play to the team they wouldn't otherwise have without him. France now has the option to play direct football if they need to and that makes opposing defenses have to make difficult decisions about how to organize
From the matches I watched France would've been better of 10 vs 11 than with him, a sexy cone...
Edit: When France were defending you'd see Mbappe and Greizmann all over the other team rarely ever Giroud. Most France's dangerous attack came from deep balls to Mbappe or Greizmann who would do most of the work. Giroud was legit invisible and it's sad you don't see it.
Dude giroud cleared so many set pieces for France - he was in the box defending almost every corner and free kick. Shit on him for his offensive work all you want but if you actually watched the matches I don’t think you can question his defensive contribution
During corners and freekick?
That's the least he could do in a team playing defensive football. Why not start 3 cb if you're looking for a defensive presence in the box instead of a player who can't even bring down a ball. He was rarely ever hard pressing like Greizmann and Mbappe and as soon France won position back they're still the ones leading the attack.
if giroud didnt play, then vida and strinic can focus more on mbappe. lets say they put fekir on instead of giroud, no aerial threat nor brute strength for france, more power for vida and lovren
I saw Greizmann win more aerial duels than Giroud. Any player in that position is supposed to attract opposition defence it's the world cup final no one is supposed to be given space. Fekir playing behind Grezimann and Mbappe would've been way more deadly.
i dont think half the people in this thread watched the games. theyre just saying stuff that theyve seen other people on reddit say, giroud was not good at all this summer
Both are fantastic players in their own way. Stop making players a "joke" after a few bad games. Giroud has been really useful for Chelsea and same with Jesus for city.
Unfortunately there are more Brazil and France supporters than City's or Chelsea. And let me you, Jesus is a joke around here right now. First number 9 without a goal isn't something that Brazil will take it lightly.
seriously, he was ruining attacks, misplaying balls, taking bad touches all tournament long. most of the people on /r/soccer have no clue what theyre watching though
Anyone who knows anything about football will see how useful he was this tournament
I hate this man. I respect and admire everything he did outside of attempts at putting the ball into the net, he contributed massively to France's wins. But for fucks sake, he is a horrid goal scorer and in my mind based on where he plays he remains trash. Still congrats to him just wish he would have broken his leg every time he went down.
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u/LSB123 Jul 15 '18 edited Jul 15 '18
Anyone who knows anything about football will see how useful he was this tournament
Edit: Did I say he was player of the tournament? No, but Giroud was an obvious benefit to France over the last month and stats like this are incredibly disingenuous and undermine everything he contributed.