"Certain that four or five players who were starters for Didier will leave the squad to make room for a new philosophy." The line comes from Marcel Desailly, speaking to Flashscore ahead of a moment the whole of French football is waiting for: Zinédine Zidane's first squad list as head coach of Les Bleus.
Appointed on 28 July 2026 to succeed Didier Deschamps, Zidane is due to unveil that inaugural list on Friday 18 September at 6 p.m., at a press conference at the French Football Federation's headquarters — a date pushed back a day from the original 17 September announcement. That document will show who the first casualties of the post-Deschamps era are.
For Desailly, this won't be a simple squad tweak. In the former France captain's view, Zidane "will really try to erase the philosophy Didier put in place and impose his own." The ex-defender named no names, but the message is clear: a change of coach is shaping up as a change of doctrine.
The two men have, admittedly, never built the same kind of football. Deschamps built twelve years of results on a defensive base, a stable hierarchy and a pragmatic reading of games. Zidane, shaped by his years at Real Madrid, is associated with a more attacking identity and visible trust in ball-carriers. The 18 September list will show, concretely, which senior players from the end of the Deschamps era fit this new project — and which do not.
The calendar leaves him no observation window. The first gathering is set for 21 September, ahead of a tough Nations League group against Italy, Belgium and Turkey: away in Izmit on 25 September, then in Belgium on the 28th, followed by two home games at the Stade de France — Italy on 2 October, Belgium on the 5th. The final two matchdays are in mid-November, and only the top two in each group reach the quarter-finals, set for 25 and 30 March 2027.
On exactly who the transition's "casualties" will be, caution is still warranted: several names are circulating in the French press, none confirmed, and Desailly himself stuck to a rough number rather than a list. The definitive answer comes on 18 September, document in hand.
This kind of reshuffle reaches well beyond France's own borders. A change of France coach systematically reshuffles the deck for a whole set of dual-nationals developed in Ligue 1: those Deschamps never called up may see a window opening, those he relied on face a new kind of risk. Every past transition at Les Bleus has ended up opening the door to fresh profiles — and closing it on internationals wrongly assumed to be untouchable.
