France Advances to World Cup Final, Faces Fatigue Concerns Before Argentina Clash

Has Morocco exhausted France in the World Cup semi-final? The Blues overcame the Lions of the Atlas after 99 minutes of a fiercely contested match. "After the match, we were KO, frankly... We ran a lot, the competition is long, it’s a lot of matches we’re stringing together with a lot of intensity," admitted 22-year-old Aurélien Tchouaméni, a starter for the six matches played in the World Cup. He has accumulated 552 minutes alone. "The England-Morocco sequence has hurt us physically," added the Real Madrid midfielder, hoping that his teammates and he will recover well before the match against Argentina.

The captain of the Blues, Hugo Lloris, expresses the same feeling. "We made so much effort, we suffered so much that we come out of a match like this, drained," he confided. Already some repercussions on their training. On Thursday, the physiotherapists provided care to the starters from the day before. They only ran or pedaled, while the others carried out a "more intensive session (warm-up, toro, 5-a-side game with a joker player)," according to the French Football Federation (FFF).

In addition to exhaustion, some of Kylian Mbappé’s teammates are facing another physical difficulty: a "cold." "Temperatures have rather dropped" recently in Qatar, a country where there is also "air conditioning at full blast," explained France coach Didier Deschamps in a press conference, suspecting a possible virus. "Anything viral is transmissible. We have taken precautions so that there is no contact, with Dayot, and the same for Adrien," he said. However, the staff rules out the hypothesis of Covid-19.