The last time France won the World Cup was 16 years ago when they had home pitch advantage and one of the best teams in the nation's history. In Brazil, they will rely on a makeshift group of players that are talented individuals, but don't play too well as a team. They were lucky enough to play in a relatively easy group, so they are credited with the first chance to win it, but the elimination stage will be very different.
Deschamps is the new coach and the changes implemented by the former French international delivered positive results. He doesn't have to deal with a lot of pressure, because the last time France played at the World Cup, they were eliminated in the group stage. Since it is virtually impossible to do worse than Reymond Domenech, Didier must simply do his best to enjoy a hero's welcome when he returns home.
Group stage and event prospects
They will be playing against Switzerland, Honduras and Ecuador in the opening stage and Bet365 offers odds of 1.66 for France to win the group. There is hardly value in these odds and given the fact that the qualification campaign didn't go smoothly, it is not really a good choice to place this bet. It would be far more profitable to simply bet on them to win all the games with the cover of a 0:0 Asian handicap.
Honduras and Ecuador are clearly the outsiders, but Switzerland can cause the upset by winning more points than France. The most important aspect is to move to the next stage of the competition and Didier Deschamps will need to take some chances upfront. The South American teams will be wary of the permanent danger posed by Benzema and will assign two players to contain him at all times. Luckily for France, they have plenty of offensive players capable of scoring goals besides the Real Madrid striker.
Key players for France at the World Cup
As stated above, Karim Benzema is the one that the Europeans will rely most when it comes to scoring goals and he will feature upfront in all three games. The odds for him to score the most goals at the World Cup 2014 are 26 to 1 with Bet365 which represents great value. Normally, the odds would be slightly lower, but since bookmakers are not too confident in France's chances of making the finals, they were bumped.
The reason for why punters should contemplate the possibility of Benzema actually winning the trophy is that he will be the recipient of most passes. Ribery and Valbuena are great on the wings, but they are not selfish players and will provide the striker with numerous useful balls. Ribery is also a good choice for those who want to bet on goal scorers, as he's expected to receive high odds in those games played by from in the group stage.
The bottom line
France is only a pale shadow of the team that won the trophy in 1998, even though they have plenty of gifted players. When things get tough, they need to play as a team and except for the impressive victory over Ukraine in the qualifying campaign, they were rather underwhelming. Those who don't mind backing an underdog for the sake of decent odds should check out Bet365 who offers odds of 23 to 1 for France to win the World Cup 2014.
