Get French Football News sat down with former Stade Rennais, Manchester United, Arsenal and France defender Mikaël Silvestre to look back at les Bleus performance at the recent World Cup, and to look at some potentially interesting prospects for the coming season.

In this first part, Mikaël looked back on France’s World Cup, at Didier Deschamps’ record and suggested what we can expect under Zinedine Zidane.

Looking back at France’s fourth place finish in the World Cup, what do you think of their performance? Is it positive overall, or negative, as we didn’t win?

Yes, we needed to get past Spain and weren’t able to do that. And when you enter a competition with the aim of winning, if you don’t win you can’t say that it is positive, so maybe the overall headline is negative. But there are some positive things to take. We played some good matches, we had players who played well both individually and collectively with really good team play at times, if not always. So there were some positives and you could say that Didier [Deschamps] has left some very positive work in place for Zizou [Zinedine Zidane]. So it’s a sense of unfinished business, with positives to take forward.

Christophe Dugarry said that with one trophy win out of seven tournaments played, he considers Didier Deschamps’ tenure to be a failure. I think that’s a bit harsh…

Yes, that is tough. When you consider that the last World Cup in Qatar, we only lost it on penalties which is a lottery, after we were better than the Argentines in the second half, so we were very close to a third star there. And even in this tournament, if we had got past Spain, I think we would have beaten Argentina. So yes, I think it’s harsh and is not really doing justice to Didier and his time in charge, as we came so close in Qatar.

Zinedine Zidane has been appointed as the new France coach. You know him as a former international team-mate. Is he the type who will change everything, or will he retain some continuity with the players and team set-up of Deschamps?

No, I think we can expect a certain consistency, continuity in what has been done and with the players selected. I think there will be some changes in the style of play, and we will have our first clues in the next international break, to see what the Zidane era will look like and I think we’re all looking forward to seeing it.

Mikaël Silvestre was speaking exclusively to Get French Football News courtesy of talkSPORT Bet Online Slots

GFFN | Jeremy Smith