The France players are flooding the Belgian box, running with purpose and single-mindedness towards their target, their paths too numerous and overlapping to track. The static Belgium defenders are powerless to resist the sheer abandon of this co-ordinated collective movement. It’s what Didier Deschamps’s detractors have been crying out for. Unfortunately, this only happens once in the entire game: in the moments after Jan Vertonghen’s 85th-minute own goal, which brings France’s substitutes streaming off the bench and sends Deschamps’s squad to the quarter-finals having scored precisely one penalty goal in four matches.
OK, that was a cheap shot. But there’s a serious point. There is a dormant well of joyful, free expression in this France squad. You see it in the moments after they score
