As captain, Julien naturally accompanied Deschamps to the pre-match press conference.
Once Deschamps had finished speaking, the reporters immediately turned every eye toward Julien.
A French reporter was the first to speak up. "Fans and media alike are speculating that this time France's target is the championship. As captain, can you confirm that? Or, what's your expectation for how the team will perform in this tournament?"
Julien shook his head in response. "I don't want to talk about the word 'champion' too soon. Because every single match in a tournament is full of variables. All we can do is focus on the minute in front of us.
But I can say this clearly: every one of us on this team has come here with real fighting spirit. We won't let our own effort go to waste, and we won't let our fans down.
Our goal is clear: give everything we have in every match, play at our very best, and try to bring a second World Cup trophy home for the French fans. Yes, that is our ultimate goal.
Maybe it's a hard ask.
In every bit of pre-tournament coverage, France is nowhere near the favourite to win it all. Plenty of people probably think, 'Oh, thank god this French team, at least they won't tear themselves apart from the inside.'"
At that, Julien laughed a little.
Down among the reporters, people laughed good-naturedly along with him.
Then Julien added, "But I firmly believe—if we all pull together as one rope, there's nothing we can't do."
The next reporter jumped in. "As a young captain, how do you motivate your teammates before a match? When pressure and setbacks come up, how do you lead the team back to form?"
Julien said, "Being captain was never about age. And besides—my teammates and I, we're brothers.
We don't need any extra motivation. We fight side by side, we stand on the pitch together, and we already know what needs doing without anyone having to say it.
We've trained together, fought together for so long now. We trust each other, we hold each other up—that's the strongest thing we've got behind us."
Julien added one more line: "We call this 'brotherhood football.'"
That got the reporters laughing even harder.
Someone in the crowd called out, "Well, then you definitely won't be tearing each other apart."
Which drew another wave of laughter.
The next reporter asked, "Compared to the last Euros you played in, where do you think this team has improved the most? Will that be the key to a good result this time?"
Julien nodded, thought it over briefly, then said, "The biggest improvement is in our resilience and our togetherness.
At the Euros, we were maybe a little impatient—when things got hard, we'd sometimes lose our shape. But this time, we're steadier, we understand each other better.
Whether it's the link-up play in attack or holding the line in defence, we're more organized than before, and we know better how to keep things under control when it matters most.
That improvement was earned with sweat, every one of us. It's also the confidence that lets us face any opponent without flinching. I believe it's going to be the key to us getting a good result."
One last question.
The reporter asked, "What would you like to say to the fans supporting you?"
Julien smiled. "Stay with us to the end—who knows, maybe we'll make it all the way there."
These reports, carried across every media platform, reached the ears of every fan following the French national team, and set off another round of discussion.
Of course, for a lot of fans, in the run-up to this World Cup, the bigger story might have actually been the endless string of headaches coming out of host nation Brazil.
Wave after wave of protests rose from the Brazilian public.
And all kinds of safety issues besides—a fire during stadium construction that killed eight workers, unauthorized entry into a stadium, an unstable temporary staircase inside the Maracanã, a monorail collapse, an unfinished overpass collapsing in Belo Horizonte... and so on.
And yet, none of it could dim the pull of the matches themselves.
As the tournament got underway, it was gradually buried under the fans' own discussion of the games.
That night, darkness spilled over the city's skyline, and Julien stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of his hotel room.
He looked down at the city below, boiling over with World Cup fever.
In his ears, he could almost already hear the cheers and roars from the stands.
Through his mind flickered countless nights spent alongside football.
Everything—all of it had been in service of arriving at this one stage, the one he'd dreamed of.
The World Cup.
Those three words had never just meant a tournament to him. They were a faith that countless footballers spent their entire lives chasing.
He used to just imagine what it would feel like, standing here.
And now, here he was, standing on this ground made of dreams.
Every hope he'd ever had was now something he could reach out and touch.
Julien broke into a smile.
Win this match!
Win every match!!
He was ready.
The night passed without incident.
The next day.
Porto Alegre, the city boiling over with World Cup fever, had football madness thick in the air—every street, every corner, was packed with fans.
The entire city was fully, completely alive.
Most eye-catching of all were the fans who had come all this way from France.
They wore blue French jerseys.
Some had team crests painted on their faces, waving French flags and signs printed with players' names, moving through the streets in packs.
Some held up signs reading: "Allez les Bleus."
They sang the French team's anthem together, raising voices, full of fire.
They'd crossed oceans to get here, travelled untold distances for one reason only—to stand at the edge of this dream of a stage and cheer their team on.
Among them was one particular group of fans whose jerseys looked a little different from everyone else's.
Also blue, but theirs were stitched together from two different jerseys.
Bastia!
Nearly a thousand Bastia fans had made the journey from that little stretch of Mediterranean coast, all the way here, for one purpose only—to watch Julien play.
They were France fans. But more than that, they were Julien's fans.
Whatever they sang, whatever they shouted, almost all of it was about Julien.
They stood out sharply in the crowd.
Besides the French fans, supporters from all over the world had gathered here too.
All of them come to soak in this feast of football.
Time raced on.
As night fell over Porto Alegre, the city only grew more electric.
Especially Beira-Rio Stadium.
By now, it looked as if the whole place had caught fire.
The stands were packed with not a single empty seat.
Both teams had already finished their pre-match warm-ups and returned to the locker rooms to prepare.
The match was about to begin.
In the French locker room, every player stood in a circle, eyes fixed on head coach Deschamps standing in the middle.
Deschamps gave his final words before kick-off.
"I won't go over tactics—you already know them by heart.
Honduras isn't as strong as us on paper, but don't you dare take this lightly!
Remember!
Right now, standing here, behind you is the hope of countless French fans, and ahead of you is the World Cup stage itself—the stage that so many people spend their whole lives dreaming of.
This is also your moment to prove yourselves.
I'm not asking you to win big. I'm asking you to fight for every ounce of strength you have, hold every position, and put everything we've trained for out there on the pitch.
Remember—you're not fighting alone. Beside you are your brothers, fighting with you.
And behind you is the support of all of France.
Let go of the weight on your shoulders. Focus on the match!"
Once Deschamps finished speaking, the players nodded, one after another.
Julien was the first to put his hand out, into the middle, and said to everyone, "Let's go. First match!"
Pogba was the first to place his hand on top of Julien's.
Then Kanté, Varane, Griezmann... one by one, every hand stacked together.
Julien looked around at everyone and began the count. "3, 2, 1—"
"Allez la France!!!"
"Allez la France!!!!"
Everyone's blood was up, and they roared it out with everything they had.
Right after that, it was time.
The players walked out of the locker room, and Deschamps embraced each one before sending them off toward the players' tunnel.
Meanwhile, back in France, match commentator Alphonse was already delivering his commentary with strong enthusiasm.
"...In today's match, there's one man we absolutely have to keep our eyes on—Julien De Rocca!
He's not just the team's captain; he's the very soul of this French side!
Fans who know Julien well already understand—his dribbling, his passing, his finishing, all of it is at the very top of the sport right now. What he does out there directly shapes the tempo of France's entire attack.
I'll say it outright—Honduras absolutely knows how important Julien is. In this match, they're bound to throw everything they have at shutting him down. Odds are they'll assign someone to mark him tight, maybe even double- or triple-team him to limit what he can do.
But I believe Julien has more than enough to break through that defence and drive the whole team's attack forward. He's never let us down yet..."
Alphonse then moved on to introduce both starting lineups one by one. "Deschamps is going with the classic 4-3-3 today.
The front line is Giroud, Griezmann, and De Rocca—a strong front three, balancing pace and physical presence, and I expect they'll put strong pressure on Honduras's back line.
In midfield, it's Pogba, Kanté, and Matuidi holding things down—capable both in attack and defence, able to shore things up at the back while still supplying the forwards.
At the back, right-back Debuchy, centre-backs Varane and Sakho paired together, and left-back Evra, those four make up a solid defensive wall.
In goal, once again, it's Lloris, guarding France's net..."
Having covered France, Alphonse quickly moved through Honduras's starting lineup as well. "Now let's look at our opponents, Honduras. They're playing a 4-4-2, built around defence and counterattack.
Up front, it's Costly paired with Bengtson.
The midfield four are Espinoza, Wilson Palacios, Garrido, and Nájar.
On the back line—left-back Izaguirre, center-backs Figueroa and Bernárdez, right-back Beckeles.
And in goal, it's Valladares..."
Soon enough, as the restlessness among the fans at Beira-Rio Stadium grew louder and louder, the players appeared right on schedule at the tunnel.
Officially taking the field!
The players of France and Honduras, each in their team colours, walked out of the tunnel one after another.
In an instant, Beira-Rio Stadium erupted into a deafening roar.
BOOM!
BOOM BOOM!!
Cheers, shouts—every sound braided together, breaking through the stadium's roof, driving the whole ground's frenzy to its peak.
Julien walked at the front of the French line, Giroud and Griezmann behind him.
Up in the stands, the French fans were a wall of sound, their chanting so unified it felt like it might swallow the whole stadium.
The Honduran fans weren't backing down either, waving their flags, their shouts were rising one after another.
The entire stadium had turned into one boiling sea.
The players made their way onto the pitch in an orderly line, and the pre-match ceremony proceeded step by step as scheduled.
The officiating crew took their positions, both teams' players exchanged greetings, the cameras began panning across every player's face.
Following the customary order of an international football match, next came the moment everyone was waiting for—the playing of the national anthems.
This was standard for every international fixture, the moment for players to express their pride in their country, an essential part of the run-up to kick-off. The crowd gradually fell silent, waiting for the two anthems to sound, ready to witness this solemn moment together.
And then, something unexpected happened.
The anthem that was supposed to play never came—the stadium's sound system simply gave nothing back.
Staff scrambled at the edge of the field, fiddling with the equipment with worry on faces, but nothing they did could get the sound working again.
The whole stadium fell into a brief, stunned silence.
Then a wave of murmuring rose up.
At an event as major as the World Cup, a basic failure like the sound system going dead was almost unheard of.
In the end, the staff on site had no choice but to announce that, due to a sound equipment failure, the pre-match national anthem ceremony would have to be cancelled.
Hearing this, the players on both teams wore looks of confusion, shrugging without quite meaning to before reaching out to shake hands, their eyes were still full of disbelief.
These were players who'd fought on international stages for years, who'd seen just about everything and clearly, even they hadn't expected something like this.
As it happened, this wasn't the first slip-up in Brazil's World Cup preparations.
Since the tournament kicked off, the organizing committee's preparations had been plagued by scandal after scandal, one piece of bad news after another was coming.
Even now, with the group stage in full swing, a basic failure like this could still happen.
It only deepened the outside world's doubts about whether Brazil could actually pull off hosting this tournament successfully.
More than a few fans in the crowd looked visibly disappointed, muttering under their breath about the organizing committee's carelessness.
Even with this hiccup before kick-off, the match still had to go on.
The players quickly reset themselves, taking their positions at the centre circle.
Compared to the French players, it was the Honduran players who were clearly the more nervous side.
Even at its worst, France was still a European powerhouse—a team that had won the World Cup before. For Honduras, simply making it into the World Cup at all already counted as no small achievement.
Just getting out of the group stage would already be their biggest possible triumph.
Facing France now, and especially with the famously formidable Julien De Rocca in their lineup, it was hard not to feel some nerves.
Soon, the head referee, Sandro Ricci, raised his whistle and blew it.
Peep!!
The whistle cut sharply across the whole of Beira-Rio Stadium.
The match had officially begun!
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