The French national team stars have been suffering from an unconventional curse recently, which has not only affected their technical or physical level, but has also thrown them into a spiral of problems outside the green rectangle.
This French curse has been linked to the piece of cloth that the captain of the Roosters wears on his arm, which has sparked widespread controversy over the past two years, especially after losing the 2022 World Cup final to Argentina.
After returning from the Qatar World Cup, a number of big French stars such as Hugo Lloris, Raphael Varane, Steve Mandanda, and before them Karim Benzema, retired, leaving the captain’s seat confined to the duo Olivier Giroud, the historical scorer for the Roosters, and Antoine Griezmann, one of the oldest players in the team.
But Didier Deschamps, the coach of the French national team, surprised everyone by choosing the younger Mbappe to be the team captain starting in March 2023, which caused a huge uproar around the team in the media.
Mbappe wore the captain’s armband for the Roosters in 17 international matches, but he never enjoyed it. Rather, he entered a spiral of problems with his former club, Paris Saint-Germain, which ended with him leaving for free at the end of his contract. However, the legal disputes between him and Nasser Al-Khelaifi continue.
The curse of the “French armband” continued with Mbappe, frustrating his hopes in Euro 2024, as he suffered a broken nose that affected his level throughout the tournament, causing the overall performance of the French national team to falter and end up losing to Spain in the semi-finals.
With his move to Real Madrid, the curse on Mbappe intensified, as he was widely criticized in the French media for what was reported about his unwillingness to join the French camp last September in order to be more focused with his new team.
To make matters worse, he was excluded from the October and November camps despite his readiness to participate in the matches, so the media began to raise question marks about Kylian’s eligibility to wear the captain’s armband in the future.
The curse of the armband was not limited to Mbappe alone, as his Real Madrid teammate, Aurelien Tchouameni, did not enjoy it, as he replaced him as captain of the Roosters in the October camp last year, but he wore it in only two matches and suffered a muscle injury that kept him out of the camp this month. Tchouameni
also suffered fierce criticism for his performance with Real Madrid, and talk began in the media about the Royal Club officials moving to dispense with him in the future.
The curse also passed on N’Golo Kante, the Al-Ittihad Jeddah midfielder, who captained the Roosters in two matches, the last of which was a tense confrontation against the Zionist entity last Thursday, as the focus was much greater on securing the match than on the events on the field.
Paris Saint-Germain defender Presnel Kimpembe was a prominent victim of the curse of the French armband, as he wore it in only two matches in June 2022, but since then Kimpembe has been away from the field due to serious injuries that required surgeries on his Achilles tendon, hamstring tendons and muscles.
During his long career with the French national team, which spanned 137 international matches, Antoine Griezmann wore the captain’s armband for the French four times as of September 2022, but he was psychologically shaken after Mbappe was preferred over him and his status in the French ranks declined, surprising many by retiring from international football a few days before the October camp.
In October 2014, Raphael Varane had the honor of wearing the captain’s armband for the first time, but the former Real Madrid defender suffered from numerous injuries that kept him off the field for a long time. Despite his participation in major achievements with his Spanish team and his national team, he found himself forced to retire from football permanently after a very unsuccessful experience with Manchester United, and an adventure that ended before it even began with Como in Italy.
Unlike the stars of the current generation of the French national team, the curse of the “armband” also has ancient roots. No one can forget the final scene of the star Zinedine Zidane, who ended his career in football by being sent off from the 2006 World Cup final after a famous headbutt on the chest of the Italian defender Marco Materazzi.
