France coach Didier Deschamps on Tuesday sought to temper growing expectations generated by his team’s impressive run to the World Cup quarterfinals.
Under Deschamps’s steady guidance, France has risen majestically from the ashes of the chaotic 2010 campaign in South Africa.
But the skipper of the 1998 world title-winning side was keeping his feet firmly on the ground back at his squad’s Brazil headquarters in Ribeirao Preto on Tuesday.
“I’m a realist, my target, like my players, is Friday,” he said the day after goals from Paul Pogba and an own goal from Joseph Yobo downed Nigeria.
Deschamps, 45, added: “It doesn’t serve any purpose to look any further ahead. The reality now is Germany on Friday. “Everyone can dream, including me, but I’m a pragmatist and a realist, Friday is the only thing that counts.”
Deschamps, who succeeded fellow World Cup and Euro 2000 winner Laurent Blanc as national coach after Euro 2012, rejected the notion that France was favourite against Germany, but at the same time made clear his team wasn’t going to Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana “as tourists”.
Reflecting on France’s progress through to the last eight after topping the first round group he stated: “We haven’t made a mess of our World Cup.
“I’m very proud and the players deserve it, it’s a huge pleasure for me and my staff to be involved on a daily basis with them and to manage them, to be with them. But we’re not going there (to Rio de Janeiro) as tourists on Friday.”
He downplayed any lingering significance of the memorable 1982 World Cup semifinal between the two teams.
The game in Seville attained notoriety when Germany keeper Harald Schumacher shoulder-charged Patrick Battiston, leaving the Frenchman unconscious on the ground.
