those champions who know how to stay in the second row – Corriere.it

In his career he has always played in Spain (Real Sociedad, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Atletico again), Uruguay his country of choice (he drinks mate, eats asado, pronounces vamo without the s in River Plate style, wears often the shirt of Celeste, all the fault of his first coach Martin Lasarte and his great friend Diego Godin), but if there is a perpetually lit dynamo for France, which also supplies energy to the blazes of Kylian Mbapp, this is Antoine Griezmann. The one with Morocco was the 73 appearance in a row for the national team (record): in the last five and a half years he has started every single match, from the final of the World Cup (the last one and, if something unpredictable doesn’t happen, also the next one ) to a friendly in Bolivia. Bizarre fate: in the youth national teams he was often overlooked and in his second chapter at Atletico he was precarious, the fault of a lump sum contract which provided for the payment of 40 million to Barcelona if he played more than 45′ in half matches. But for the Blues a fixed point.

In the national team he scored 42 goals, behind only Giroud and Henry (with 28 assists), in this World Cup it’s easy for him not to add even one, which could be a problem for a forward, but his impact will be no less: the brilliant move by Deschamps, to make up for the absences of Pogba and Kant, was turning him into a box to box midfielder. everywhere: in the semifinal with Morocco he cleared in front of Lloris three times. To do this you need to be convinced: I owe everything to Deschamps – he explains –. Every move like a “thank you” I send him. I want him to be proud of me.

All of France is proud, and perhaps not only given that Grizou (who was the cover man of a gay magazine in 2019), was one of the few to talk about LGBTQ rights here in Qatar. When he plays in the final on Sunday, he will meet a teammate from Atletico, who like him hasn’t had an easy season, but who with the Argentina shirt is one of the irreplaceables, one of the facilitators of the game: Rodrigo De Paul, born in Sarand, province of Buenos Aireswhere Italian immigrants from Genoa produce wine, known as il Pollo for his posture on the pitch, profession: Leo Messi’s bodyguard.

With the tactical lessons learned at Udinese, De Paul is the king of the midfield with Enzo Fernandez. Messi is always in the Albiceleste (even in the pre-match warm-up): When I play I often think about how I can make him run less and leave him free to invent. Leo and I understand each other at a glance, says Rodrigo. If Leo loses the ball, De Paul is ready to press to win it back, if someone tries to man-mark Messi, he is a diversion nearby, takes fouls and runs twice. In the three group games he covered 52 kilometres, more than any other Argentine, Messi 27.

His World Cup did not start well, like everyone else’s: with Saudi Arabia he had lost the ball 15 times. From then on it was a crescendo, until the match against Croatia, where the balls went to eradicate them. Off the pitch (apart from sending romantic messages on social media to his girlfriend, actress Tini Stoessel), the role is more or less the same: Leo and I, with Papu, get up early in the morning and drink mate, then they join Maria, Paredes, Lo Celso and Otamendi. If one gets up early he has to do something else, the order must be respected. The squire takes care of it, like many other things.