Mvila, Alou Diarra, Diaby, Valbuena, Benzema, Malouda, Rami star as France win away to Bosnia 2-0

September 7th, 2010 | by: jeff |

A really good performance from France and this is just what we’d like to see all the time.

Mvila -Cut by Domenech before the World Cup. Brilliant holding midfielder. France played a sort of 4-2-3-1 with Diaby behind Benzema. Mvila played left of and a little in front of Alou Diarra in midfield. He was immense. A couple misplaced passes during the match, but he already looks like the best midfielder France has available. Really strong on the ball. Creates time to pass by being so sharp with his close control. He’s so young, just 20 years old, and he’s already dominant. If he can be consistent, then he’s the first name on the team sheet if selection is based on form.

Alou Diarra – Captain for the night, and based on that team performance, he can keep the captain’s armband. He was mopping up and it made me wonder if Lassana’s ever going to get a game?

Diaby – I’m a long time supporter, and I thought he was great again tonight.

Valbuena – Not a lot of pace, but great close control. Had the assist, after Diaby set it up, for Malouda’s goal.

Benzema – Pass came in from Clichy, I think it was, and Big Benz was all twists and turns, and dispatched the first nice goal that we’ve seen from this France team in a long time.

Malouda – Got the second goal and was good throughout. Came off after we were up 2-0. A leader on the team now. I’ve complained a lot about him in the past, but I wouldn’t have if he always played like that. Domenech would pick him when he wasn’t in form.

Rami – A rock at the back. There is no way he’s losing his place on merit.

The other starters were Mexes, Lloris, Clichy, and Sagna. Mexes did well. The other three are known quantities. I was shocked by how much flack Clichy got for the Belarus match. He should have conceded a goal kick. He loses concentration sometimes, but I was very surprised that some people were lobbying for him to be dropped in favor of Tremoulinas.

Blanc – Big victory for the boss, but it’s the performance that has me elated.

Have I gone overboard on Mvila? I don’t think so, but if you saw the match, what do you think?

Jeff

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pierrot

agree completely about m'vila, past 3 matches. tremendously calm, confident, strong on the ball, decisive and strong in the tackle, very good technically and very good vision. extremely impressive for a 20 yo – never loses his cool, SO calm in heavy traffic. definitely could be watching a dominant, world class holding/box to box midfielder developing – a diminutive viera type player.
http://france.worldcupblog.org/ Jean-François Racinet

I don't think you've gone overboard with M'vila. He is absolutely stellar. He is Blanc's greatest discovery.
http://thebeantownfrog.blogspot.com/ GFC

I don't think that you are going over board on M'Vila, he is an incredible talent…Domenech at least had some intelligence to preselect him. Based on his play I think that players such as Toulalan and LDiarra might be frozen out of the holding midfield – the former also because he is slotting as a central defender. I also agree on ADiarra's play. He was very strong in terms of cleaning the junk in the midfield, was strong on his tackles and very good in the air. With a midfield of Diaby, Diarra and M'Vila is very different in terms of size than Lass and Toulalan and it showed on set pieces.

The Bosnia game was a crucial win for Les Bleus one cannot underestimate the impact this game could have on the team. More of my thoughts – http://bit.ly/aFqZWI
Michel-Olivier

please
the bosnians played awful that is why france look good, if it was belarus again, france would of lose even if they play 3-4 defensive dm and benz. to be honest i do not see the difference between dom team and blanc team, against good technical team france will always lose.
sandra350

So according to Michel-Olivier, Belarus are a tougher, more technical team than Bosnia. Winning an away game in Bosnia is easy.
Aditya

Good analysis. Don't worry, you cannot go overboard with praises for M'Villa at the moment.
I still prefer other left backs over Clichy. Cissoko would be my choice. He is the best defender amongst all the options and good going forward as well.

Diaby really surprised me. I had great hopes for him when he went to Arsenal but haven't been this impressed with him ever.
ROD

cissokko over clichy any day but unfortunately Sagna is the guy and I have no problem with he's just out of form at the moment but the mexes-rami partnership looks strong and teams like france don't rebuild they reload in the midfield especially in the middle there's real quality and Benzema is coming back to his old form so the healing process after the WC fiasco is starting to truly begin.
lefutur

yeah, rami might be blanc's number 2 discovery.
Fuweng

I'm convinced !!!!

M'Villa will be our future and the one who's starting in the DM position for France !

Toulalan, A.Diara and Diaby will be backup options of us !!! Your thought ?
Alex

I was very impressed that France was able to get so many men forward, even with such a defensive midfield. I really enjoyed the match, and Bosnia really never seemed close to scoring.

With respect to M-O's comments, it is true that Bosnia may have had an off-day, however, it also appears that France took the game to Bosnia and forced many errors / unsettled the Bosnian players.

Additionally, towards the end of the match, it felt as if Bosnia was trying to defend rather than attack, as they realized they could not pose much of a threat to the French defense. France had no difficulty tearing apart the Bosnian defense, even at this stage (i.e., the stage at which Bosnia concentrated on defensive, rather than attacking play.). This suggests that France may be strong even against the more defensive-minded teams in the group.