Why Deschamps should pick Barcola to start the World Cup clash against Sweden over Doué?

Didier Deschamps' France team has easily claimed the top spot of Group I thanks to their incredible attacking displays. Throughout their three games, the national coach was still subject to changes in just one position, his left winger. A battle between two PSG players for a starting role which started before the opening clash against Senegal.

Why Barcola should start over Doué in the World Cup Round of 32 against Sweden?

Bradley Barcola thrive when he has space in front of him

France has largely dominated through their group stage campaign coming out on top of Senegal, Iraq and Norway, while scoring 10 goals in those three games. In this span, Didier Deschamps have faced a variety of systems with Senegal and Norway opening the games while Iraq used a mix between seating deep in front of their box and fastbreaks.

In those scenarios, it was mostly Barcola who showed the most promise, particularly when he had space as he is able to mae the most of his incredible abilities while exploiting any gaps or weaknesses in the opposing defences.

Now, with the clash against Sweden coming up on June 30, Viktor Gyokeres and Alexander Isak's teammates will most likely try to open the game to make the most of their attacking duo against France. However, this revealed to be extremely costly against Netherlands in the group stage as the Swedish were largely dominated 5-1. Which likely to happen again against Didier Deschamps's team.

Therefore, starting with Bradley Barcola who will constantly run at their defenders while using the gravities of Kylian Mbappé, Michael Olise and Ousmane Dembélé could make him an almost unstoppable force against Sweden.

Désiré Doué scored against Norway and will start against Sweden

Despite all the points made in the previous section, Didier Deschamps will likely give his confidence to Désiré Doué who has just opened his World Cup scoring record against Norway. The 21-year-old is definitely the most talented of the two players and while Deschamps gave a start to Barcola following his goal in the opening game against Senegal, he still kept his confidence in Doué and gave him 90 minutes in the last group stage game.

Overall, Doué is much more versatile than Barcola and can seamlessly switch positions with all the superstars of France's offensive line. While he doesn't have the same explosiveness than his PSG teammate, he can still thrive in small spaces and a variety of scenarios.

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