After the long flight, they finally landed in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
The entire French squad filed off the plane and onto a bus at the airport, then rolled slowly into the city.
Julien leaned against the window.
Like the rest of his teammates, he was exhausted. Still, his eyes drifted slowly over the seaside city in southern Brazil.
This was the city where France would open its World Cup campaign against Honduras.
It had none of Rio de Janeiro's noise and glitter, none of São Paulo's crowded bustle—instead it had a character all its own, a city that blended European elegance with South American warmth.
As a major port on Brazil's southern Atlantic coast, Porto Alegre sat where the Guaíba River met the sea, five navigable rivers converging at its banks.
In the distance, Lake Patos stretched out in a haze, its waters were merging with the deep blue sky.
The city bore unmistakable European traces.
That was hardly surprising—a great many descendants of German and Italian immigrants lived here, making it one of the most European cities in Brazil.
Football ran deep in this place. As the home ground of Grêmio, jerseys were everywhere on the streets, and every so often you could hear cheers drifting over from a pickup game somewhere nearby.
On June 15th, France would face Honduras at Beira-Rio Stadium, right here in this city, in the opening match of the World Cup group stage.
Soon the bus pulled up near the stadium. They would be staying at a hotel close by, close enough to see the pitch from their rooms.
Beira-Rio rose up along the riverbank—a steel-framed structure thirty-six meters high and fifty-three meters long, its PTFE membrane facade catching the sunlight in a soft glow. At night, they said, red floodlights would set the whole stadium aglow.
Plenty of people called it the most beautiful stadium in Brazil.
Thinking that in just a few days he'd be stepping onto this ground for the World Cup, Julien felt a surge of anticipation.
This was the first stop on their run at the trophy.
Once they'd reached the hotel, the whole squad settled in quickly—adjusting to the time difference, getting used to the climate.
Porto Alegre's weather was warm and rainy, and June fell in the middle of the local winter, with average temperatures around 14°C.
Weather like that was perfect for training.
Once they'd rested, they headed to the training ground that had already been arranged, formally beginning their final preparations before the World Cup.
Day after day, the training continued as it always had.
Tactics, conditioning, working on their combinations—everyone brought their best.
Time slipped by.
And through it all, the eyes of football fans across the world stayed fixed on Brazil, the kingdom of the sport.
The news never let up.
As the match drew closer, the atmosphere at training grew tenser by the day.
But right in the middle of this crucial stretch of preparation, France ran into something that left them not knowing whether to laugh or be annoyed; a drone had been spying on their training.
At the local-time training session on the 12th, the players were deep in tactical drills. Matuidi and Cabaye were linking up through midfield, Giroud was making runs up front to draw defenders, and Julien stood off to the side, watching his teammates work and turning over the next tactical adjustment in his head.
Just then, a strong buzzing sound drifted down from above, cutting through the silence of the training ground.
Everyone froze at once and looked up at the sky.
There it was—a military reconnaissance drone circling over their head, small in frame but impossible to miss, drifting lazily back and forth above their heads. It was clearly there to observe their training.
For a moment, the tension on the training ground eased considerably. The players' faces lit up with curiosity, and some of them laughed and pointed, murmuring to each other about the drone that had suddenly appeared.
"How on earth did this thing end up here?" Varane walked over to Julien with a note of curiosity in his voice, grinning.
Julien couldn't help smiling too.
Honestly, running into a drone spying on you at training—that was a new one.
But unlike the players, who were taking it as joke, the faces of manager Deschamps and the team staff turned serious in an instant.
Deschamps stopped the session right away and pulled the coaching staff aside for a grim-faced discussion.
He was clearly thinking about something bigger.
He was worried their tactics were being leaked.
Privately, members of the coaching staff speculated that the military drone had either been sent by one of their group-stage opponents, hoping to scout the tactics France was drilling in training and prepare for the matches ahead
or it belonged to some media outlet, willing to snoop on the team's preparations this way just to land an exclusive story.
With the World Cup so close, after all, this kind of story could turn up anywhere.
Of course, the drone flew off soon enough.
Training got back to normal before long.
Still, the news around the French team wasn't limited to that. Their team doctor and Bayern were also trading barbs in public.
Mostly over the matter of Ribéry.
France's team doctor believed that letting Ribéry play in the German Cup final against Dortmund, knowing full well he had a back injury, was the main reason his condition had gotten worse.
In the Berlin final, Ribéry had come on as a substitute for the injured captain Lahm in the 31st minute and played 80 minutes and that, they argued, was the direct cause of his being ruled out of Brazil.
Bayern, for their part, were furious at the accusation.
Bayern's position was that with France's team doctor, his colleagues, and the specialists at the Paris hospital all unable to pin down the exact nature of Ribéry's injury, it was France's refusal to let Bayern's own medical staff treat him that was really to blame for his missing the tournament.
After the season had ended, Ribéry had asked France to let him stay in Munich for treatment, but the French federation had turned him down.
In the end, it was just two sides pointing fingers at each other.
Of course, there was good news too and it was about Julien.
FIFA had laid out a set of rules for selecting the Best Young Player of the Brazil World Cup.
The most important of them, the age restriction, required that any winner be born after January 1st, 1993.
Since none of their players fell within that range, the big powers—Brazil, Spain, Italy, Argentina were all already out of the running.
Of the eight total criteria, seven were soft ones.
They were: outstanding technical skill, a fresh and distinctive style of play, creativity and inspiration, tactical maturity, the recognition and admiration of fans, a positive and fair approach to the game, and the potential to be a role model for young players.
The one hard requirement was age.
The rule stung the giants of the game, host nation Brazil very much included. Brazilian media had once boasted that their team would sweep every individual award at a World Cup played on home soil—that hope now looked dead.
Brazil's youngest player was Bernard, but he'd been born in September 1992.
In fact, across the 736 players named to the 32 squads, 187 were born in the '90s—but only 36 were born after '93. Aside from Best Referee, this was about the least contested award going.
Once the age limit was applied, everyone already had a pretty good idea who'd won it.
It was basically Julien's.
He'd been born on November 29th, 1994.
Well within range.
FIFA had handed out the Best Young Player award at the end of every World Cup since Sweden in 1958.
Past winners included Pelé, Beckenbauer, Overmars, Owen, Podolski, Müller, and others.
And now, besides Julien, the second-favourite was his own teammate, Pogba.
Pogba had been born on March 15th, 1993 right on the cutoff.
Third favourite, once again, was Julien's old friend Lukaku.
Born May 13th, 1993.
After that came Kovačić, Varane, Chamberlain, and a few others.
But most fans understood well enough that no matter how many names were floated as favourites, most of them were just running to be second.
French fans especially were dead certain Julien already had the Best Young Player locked up.
Nobody was stronger than him.
Even if you threw out the age limit entirely, it wouldn't matter—Julien wasn't just going to lock up Best Young Player, he was going to make a run at Best Player of the Tournament too.
Within the squad, everyone joked that they'd all need to pitch in and help Julien sweep every individual award going.
Time raced on.
The World Cup officially kicked off.
On the 13th, host nation Brazil took on Croatia.
For Brazilian fans, the match was a happy one from start to finish—against Croatia, Brazil more or less dominated the whole game.
Croatia had barely any answer for Brazil.
Neymar scored twice, helping his team to a 3–1 win to open the tournament.
And the one goal Croatia did get came off an own goal from Brazil—poor Marcelo put that one in his own net.
The match only turned up the volume on World Cup talk everywhere.
After that, two matches were played on the 14th.
If Mexico's 1–0 win over Cameroon counted as fairly ordinary.
Then Spain's 1–5 loss to the Netherlands left absolutely everyone stunned.
Spain got torn apart by the Dutch.
Van Persie and Robben both scored twice, and de Vrij added one more goal on top for good measure.
On Spain's side, all they had to show for it was the opening goal—Alonso had struck first.
And in the end, the Netherlands put five past them.
Spain had no answer for any of it.
For a moment, countless fans were left in disbelief. How could the defending champions have fallen this far?
Was this really the same Spain that had pulled off an unprecedented three straight major titles?
For a while, every kind of opinion imaginable came pouring in about this Spanish side.
Amid all this swirling news, on the afternoon of June 14th, local Brazil time, Deschamps held his scheduled pre-match press conference ahead of the World Cup group stage opener.
Tomorrow, France would face their first group-stage opponent in this city.
The press conference became an important window for the outside world into how France had been preparing and what their tactical thinking looked like.
Even though most observers believed the gap in strength between France and Honduras was substantial,
Deschamps insisted, from start to finish, that his team could not afford to let its guard down. He pointed to recent results as a warning to his players that there were no easy teams left at the World Cup.
"Every team except Brazil had to fight through qualifying to get here—all 32 teams are strong.
If you don't count Spain's loss to the Netherlands yesterday as an upset, remember they lost to Switzerland four years ago too.
And in the opener, Brazil had a tough time of it against Croatia as well.
So, our match with Honduras tomorrow won't be easy either."
Turning to tomorrow's opponent, Deschamps gave a detailed breakdown of Honduras, with not a trace of condescension in his tone. "Honduras is a team that likes to attack. Their 4-4-2 looks balanced on paper, but it's actually quite dangerous."
He went on to say, "Individually, Honduras's players aren't the strongest, but they can go toe-to-toe with us through strong collective play. Espinoza on the left is especially dangerous. And FIFA has them ranked 31st in the world—that alone tells you they can't be dismissed."
Ribéry's absence from the World Cup remained a focus of outside attention, and a reporter took the opportunity to ask whether losing such a national treasure of a player had affected France's preparations.
At that, Deschamps gave a small shake of his head. "Do you really believe I've had no reaction at all to Ribéry not being here?
Everyone already knows he's missing the tournament, but going back over that topic again now doesn't feel right anymore. Right now, my mind is on tomorrow's match."
He spoke about the team's current form with a fair bit of confidence. "Our defence has been excellent, our back line is strong, and our attacking players are in great physical condition.
For a while we struggled to find an effective way to score, but that was only temporary. We've moved past that now.
Because we have Julien."
After that, the conversation turned to France's captain, Julien, and Deschamps had nothing but praise for him.
"Julien is our captain, and he has his own distinct personality and qualities," Deschamps said. "He likes talking with the other players, exchanging thoughts with them.
Even when a teammate says something he doesn't really need to hear, Julien still wants to know what's on their mind."
That amounted to a real vote of confidence in Julien's leadership.
When a reporter brought up France's poor showing at the World Cup in South Africa four years earlier,
Deschamps made his position clear. "We shouldn't bring up South Africa right now, because this France team is playing a different World Cup altogether.
What we're doing here isn't something to be measured against what happened in South Africa four years ago and that's a good thing.
Right now, the mood inside this squad is excellent. Every player's family is behind us, cheering us on, and that matters a great deal.
I hope that after four weeks of hard work, France will have the result we want but more than that, I hope tomorrow we play the football we're capable of and come away with a win over Honduras in our group opener."
As the press conference moved into its second half, a reporter steered the conversation back to Julien once more.
"Didier, Julien has been sensational this season—winning the treble with Liverpool and he's now widely regarded as the clear favourite for Best Young Player at this World Cup. How do you view that assessment?"
At that question, a smile spread across Deschamps's face. "I won't argue with how the outside world sees it when it comes to Best Young Player. Julien's talent, his ability, his work ethic—everyone can see it plainly.
But in my eyes, his potential goes well beyond that. He's not just a real chance for Best Young Player of this tournament—he has a shot at Best Player of the whole World Cup.
He's the captain of this team. He's its core.
He's a big part of why we believe we can go far in this tournament, and I'm confident he'll give everyone plenty to be amazed by out there on the World Cup stage."
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