What went wrong for France vs. Spain? Deschamps disasterclass, French arrogance end World Cup title chase

Ahead of the semifinals, France had been by far the most impressive title contender at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

By the end of the 90 minutes against Spain, however, Les Bleus had been consigned to the third-place match as they suffered a 2-0 defeat to their European nemesis, who have now beaten them in three straight games.

So what went wrong for France, and how did Spain stop the world's most formidable attack?

The Sporting News explains how it all fell apart for France at the penultimate hurdle and why they only have their own arrogance to blame for their

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What went wrong for France vs. Spain?

Didier Deschamps played right into Spain's hand

It seemed obvious to all involved ahead of the World Cup semifinal that France would need to adjust to deal with Spain's possessional dominance and midfield superiority. And yet, they just...didn't. The arrogance of Didier Deschamps to think they could simply play their style against such a formidable opponent without any kind of adjustment was their undoing.

For such a decorated and brilliant manager, it's almost hard to believe how wrong Didier Deschamps got it today. Before the game, we speculated in our tactical preview that Deschamps may add an extra midfielder, sacrificing one of his four attackers up front, helping to mitigate Spain's midfield dominance.

Instead, Deschamps did nothing, and Spain took complete control of the match in the middle of the pitch. France were outnumbered 4v2 in midfield, as Spain dominated the match with three midfielders plus false nine Mikel Oyarzabal, who repeatedly tracked back into midfield to assist.

It was clear as far back as a year ago that four attackers against Spain would not work, as they would be overwhelmed in midfield. In that game, a swashbuckling 5-4 victory for Spain, La Roja advanced forward and took risks with their possession. Today, and throughout this World Cup, Luis de la Fuente has dialled Spain's attack back, using the Oyarzabal false nine to control games and trusting his players to fill the gap vacated by not having a traditional striker. In both cases, however, France were short in the middle of the pitch.

As the game went on, it became increasingly obvious that France needed help in midfield, but Deschamps repeatedly stuck with his failing tactics. At halftime, Deschamps replaced Adrien Rabiot, who was on a yellow card, instead of risking him in a situation that needed risks to be taken. Then, with 18 minutes to go, Deschamps again made a like-for-like change, taking off the bright Michael Olise to bring on Rayan Cherki instead of sacrificing a winger to give them more midfield help.

"It was difficult for us, because tactically we had a plan to put them under pressure, to go one-against-one, to not let them dictate the tempo of the game, to not let them play the way they wanted to play because it's a team who loves to have control of the game and control of the ball," said Kylian Mbappe to Jenny Taft of Fox after the game. "And that's what we let them do. We let their midfield have too much time to play, and at the end of the day they have the quality to play.

"So at the end, it's difficult when you don't change the plan of Spain."

Mbappe could see what everyone else could: that they had no way to change the way Spain would play in their current setup. For all his success and silverware in charge of France, Deschamps' final competitive match in charge was a complete and utter tactical disaster.

Michael Olise put in position to fail, locked down by Rodri

Having starred for much of the World Cup at the No. 10 for France, Michael Olise had a massively disappointing match against Spain, but it's hard to blame the Bayern Munich star for his poor performance.

Thanks to the aforementioned numerical superiority for Spain in midfield, Olise was constantly facing one-on-two scenarios in the middle of the pitch driving the ball forward. Whenever Olise got on the ball, he was either staring down both Rodri and Fabian Ruiz, or one of those two plus a defender.

An early moment foreshadowed his day perfectly when, in the opening 15 minutes, Olise began to run at the Spain back line but saw his through-ball for Kylian Mbappe blocked extremely well by Pau Cubarsi who cut off the passing lane.

France were happy to let Spain have the majority of possession. In reality, they only conceded one good scoring chance, which resulted in Pedro Porro's goal. Otherwise, they only gave up a fluky penalty. They would have been happy to let Spain have most of the ball, as long as they could get out in transition to let Olise and Ousmane Dembele run at defenders and attack the high line.

Instead, Olise and Dembele were both poor. It was clear that throughout this game, Olise had nowhere to go, because he was put in a position to fail by his manager.