French coach Didier Deschamps highlighted the problems Kylian Mbappe faced when wearing a mask to protect his broken nose in the 1-1 draw against Poland at the European Championship on Tuesday.
Mbappe scored a second-half penalty to mark his return to France's starting lineup, eight days after suffering the bloody injury late in a 1-0 win over Austria on June 17.
Deschamps said before the match that Mbappe's peripheral vision would be limited because of the mask, but there were other issues as well on a hot day in Dortmund.
“Despite everything that has happened, a week after the coup, it was complicated,” Deschamps told reporters through a translator. “I thought he was pretty good standing with the mask on. He needed to get used to it.”
“But when you sweat, it sticks to your eyes and you needed to dry your eyes.”
Still, Deschamps was happy with Mbappé's performance, as he left the forward bound for Real Madrid throughout the match, first as a central forward and then on the left wing.
“He's hungry to play and the game would have been good for him,” Deschamps said, “especially considering what we're going to do.” [next]”.
Mbappé's goal was not enough for a victory on Tuesday, and it was not enough to solve France's growing problems at Euro 2024 either.
Mbappé took off his protective mask to celebrate in front of his team's fans after converting a penalty in the 56th minute.
But Robert Lewandowski secured a 1-1 draw for Poland with a 79th-minute penalty that he took twice, leaving the French as runners-up in Group D behind Austria and putting them in the same half of the draw as Portugal. and Cristiano Ronaldo, host nation Germany and Spain, three of the continent's heavyweight nations.
Austria beat the Netherlands 3-2 in a match played at the same time.
The result also means France are yet to score a goal from open play at Euro 2024, having beaten Austria 1-0 with an own goal and then drawing 0-0 with the Dutch, when Mbappé was absent after break your nose against the Austrians. .
The Blues They have made progress, but they have not been convincing.
“I would be a lot more worried if there were no opportunities, but obviously there is a little bit of room for improvement,” Deschamps said. “Maybe there are other teams that have given something a little different, but the fact that we haven't scored limits our performance. We are here where we want to be.”
Still, Deschamps admitted that he hopes they can rediscover the impressive goalscoring form they showed in qualifying.
“We need to score more goals, we need to be more clinical and I'm looking for that,” Deschamps said. “We can improve, but that's all. We need to hit them where it hurts the most, but we've always had a pretty impressive goal average, but in these three games it hasn't been there.”
“But I am positive, I always am. It is a new competition that begins for us.”
Information from The Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.
