. France head coach Didier Deschamps says he does not want to play in the third-place match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup against England but it is the responsibility of the national team to win the bronze medal. <\/p>\n
France’s dream of reaching the World Cup final for the third consecutive time ended after losing 2-0 to Spain in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
France will now face England in Miami on Saturday for third place. <\/p>\n
In the pre-<\/p>\n
match press conference, Deschamps said that the third-place match is an official match and not a friendly and the team should play with full responsibility. He said that although both England and France were not interested in playing in the third-place game, it was necessary to win for the honours of the national jersey. <\/p>\n
‘This is not a friendly game. It is the official competition for the third place. The players, the coaches and my team are responsible for achieving this ultimate goal. It may be less important than the final, but we have to fulfil our obligations,” Deschamps said. <\/p>\n
Deschamps, who is set to step down as France head coach after the World Cup, said he would like to finish his career on a high note by finishing third.<\/p>\n
Our goal now is to secure third place. Wearing this jersey also comes with responsibility. I know it’s going to be my last game. I don’t want anyone to cry. A chapter is coming to an end, but life goes on,” he said. <\/p>\n
France defender Ibrahima Konate also admitted that none of the players were interested in playing in the third-place game after the semi-final defeat.<\/p>\n
But he said all the players were determined to bid a winning send-off to Deschamps, who has contributed so much to the team. <\/p>\n
‘None of us wanted to play for third place. But now there is no choice. The coach has contributed a lot to French football. The best way to show our gratitude to him is to win this game and win a bronze medal,” Konate said. <\/p>\n
The third-place match between France and England will be played in Miami on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Both teams are aiming to end their World Cup journey with bronze medals by winning the last match of the tournament after being eliminated from the semi-finals. ANI<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
. France head coach Didier Deschamps says he does not want to play in the third-place match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup against England but it is the responsibility of the national team to win the bronze medal. France’s dream of reaching the World Cup final for the third consecutive time ended after losingContinue reading “We don’t want to play in third place, but it’s our responsibility to win bronze: France coach Deschamps”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":76939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-samachar-en"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/photo-2_15382e3c_4dd4660d.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76947,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76946\/revisions\/76947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/media\/76939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arthakhabar.com\/ak_api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}