This was the one they wanted in France. Medals in the pool, on the track and in the rugby sevens are one thing. But football is the national sport, as much an obsession in the banlieue as in elegant suburbs. To hit bullion on home soil was the very purpose of these Games. They wanted to do what they had done in 1998: win the big one on home turf. President Macron was there to lead the celebrations.
There was just one problem. Standing in their way were Spain. Who, as England discovered earlier in the summer, are rather accomplished at the business of winning football finals.
Thierry Henry does not look a man plagued with self doubt. But as the former Arsenal great, now France’s Olympic coach, stood with his arms folded on the edge of the technical area, watching the chances of a gold medal – the first in football for the French since the 1984 Games – disappear westwards, he must have wondered what he had done wrong. Because his young French side have electrified this tournament, lifting his coaching reputation into the stratosphere, providing the home crowd with endless opportunities to crow about French superiority.
And when his lads took an early lead here, just moments after his old mentor Arsene Wenger had announced the start of things by banging a huge pole into the turf, it appeared destiny was on their side. And Henry was going to lead his country to glory.
