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About France

France are a nation who have produced some of the greatest players ever to player the game, though perhaps haven't always recorded the level of achievement at international level that their talent deserved. Just Fontaine scored 13 times at the 1958 World Cup as France were eliminated by the winners Brazil, but it took until the emergence of Michel Platini for Les Bleus to be considered a real force. His heralded displays won Euro 1984 for his nation, though in the 1982 and 1986 World Cups they were eliminated by West Germany when they were the better side on both occasions. The abject failure of missing World Cup 1994 led to a rethink of youth development and France emerged as hosts in 1998 with a team full of stars, like Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry and Lilian Thuram. They defeated Brazil 3-0 in the final in Paris, Zidane scoring twice, and they followed that up with victory in the most technically proficient major tournament of the modern era, Euro 2000, overcoming Italy 2-1 after extra-time. Though the team flopped in 2002 and 2004, Zidane came out of retirement to mastermind a run to the 2006 World Cup final against Italy, only for Zidane to be sent off and ultimately lose on penalties. The current crop are revered as a generation just as good as the era of Zidane, with Paul Pogba, Antoine Griezmann and the prodigious Kylian Mbappe firing them to the World Cup in 2018 after defeating Croatia in the final. Ligue 1 is France's top domestic competition, and throughout the 2000s it was among Europe'st most competitive, with different winners bookending a period of excellence from Olympique Lyonnais. Recently, however, a Qatari takeover of Paris Saint-Germain has saw the capital club spend hundred of millions assembling a team that has proven too good for the rest on every occasion bar finishing second to Monaco in 2016-17.