France’s World Cup winners left each other late on Monday night, some later than others, some more tired than others and some still full of beans after two days of non-stop partying.
They have two stars in their eyes and on their shirt now, too. After their triumphant 4-2 win against Croatia on Sunday afternoon and the official start of their holidays on Tuesday morning, the 23 musketeers came home victorious from their campaign in Russia on Monday, welcomed in Paris by hundreds of thousands of delirious fans.
The French players, coach Didier Deschamps and his staff will never forget the past 48 hours which have changed their lives forever. Here’s how it unfolded.
France are world champions. The rain is still pouring down and the stadium is slowly emptying out. Some French fans are still celebrating, singing and hugging each other.
The players head back towards their dressing room. All along the tunnel, Paul Pogba is holding the trophy like it was his baby and can’t stop singing: “We are the champions, we are, we are, we are the champions!”
Inside the dressing room, it is chaos. It all kicks off pretty quickly. Standing on the big rectangular table in the middle of the room, half of the team are singing: “On va tout casser, on va tout casser,” (“we will break everything”).
Deschamps keeps hugging, congratulating and kissing his players. Olivier Giroud is crying on his own. Phones in their hands, some of Les Bleus capture the scenes for social media or family and friends. President Emmanuel Macron comes in, with Russia president Vladimir Putin and Croatia president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic alongside him.
Some of the players laugh because they have no idea why the other two politicians are there, but Macron is about to talk to them so it gets a little calmer. “You have done it! I told you and the coach to bring back the second star and you have done it. You have made 60 million French people dream,” the president says.
Every time, Macron finishes a sentence, Pogba shouts: “Yes sir!”
The president concludes: “You played some magnificent football and you made children dream all over the country. You will see tomorrow [Monday] when you get home. I wanted to tell you children, a huge thank you to you and to the team.”
The celebrations continue, with Pogba leading the way. It is his idea to interrupt the start of Deschamps’ news conference, not that the France manager minded. Benjamin Mendy throws water everywhere. Presnel Kimpembe steals the microphone. They sing, they jump in front of the journalists.
Back in the dressing room, Lilian Thuram and Marcel Desailly, two of the 1998 World Cup winners, congratulate each player. Thuram has very kind words for Benjamin Pavard, whom he had never met or spoken to before. Desailly and Thuram have a long embrace with him and you can see a lot of pride in their eyes.
In one of the corners of the dressing room, Dimitri Payet and Laurent Koscielny, who both missed the competition through injury, are there. They are also congratulating their mates, but you can sense a bit of regret in their eyes.
Payet and Koscielny have gone back to Paris with Macron, aboard the president’s plane. They won’t see the scenes back at the Hilton Tree hotel in Istra (80 kilometres northwest of Moscow) where the players have spent the past five weeks.
For the 45-minute journey back on the coach, the players don’t sing. Instead, they bang on the windows, drink beers and kiss the trophy. When they arrive, they get the usual reception from the hotel staff: French flags and “Allez les bleus” chants, but this time it is even better.
“Champions du monde, champions du monde,” sing the players. Standing on a different table is Pogba, microphone in hand, and his teammates start the songs: “Ben-ja-min Pa-vard, I don’t think you know him, he comes from nowhere, he has a thunder strike, we have Benjamin Pavard!”