The only team that looks capable of stopping France right now is France. Every other side has tried — through physicality, mind games, tactical fouling — and every other side has come up short.
Les Bleus didn't arrive in America hoping to deal with that. They prepared for it. The French coaching staff specifically drilled their players on how to handle the so-called dark arts of international football: the shirt-pulling, the persistent fouling designed to disrupt rhythm, the psychological provocation that turns composed players into disciplinary liabilities. France went in with a plan, and so far, the plan is holding.
Why this matters beyond the group stage
This kind of preparation doesn't make headlines the way a Mbappé hat-trick does, but it's often what separates first-round exits from deep tournament runs. Knockout football at a World Cup is a different animal. Referees swallow their whistles. Opposition players get increasingly desperate. Trash talk escalates. Teams that haven't rehearsed staying calm in those moments tend to crack — a red card here, a loss of focus there, and suddenly a team built to win a tournament is going home in the quarters.
France has been through enough World Cup heartbreak to know how quickly things unravel. Building mental and tactical resilience into the preparation rather than leaving it to chance in the moment is a sign this squad is genuinely thinking about winning the whole thing, not just getting through the group.
That makes France tough to back against at any price right now. Their path to the final looks cleaner than their recent tournament history might suggest — and it's not just about the talent on the pitch. It's about the work that happened before a single match was played.
