Player Focus: Gignac, Lacazette and Ben Yedder give Deschamps an Embarrassment of Riches

After striking Marseille’s late winner at Caen, André-Pierre Gignac exploded with joy. In the wake of the goal, he celebrated wildly with teammates before approaching Marcelo Bielsa on the touchline. “Un abrazo para El Loco,” (‘a hug for the crazy one’), he insisted in the coach’s native Spanish, before being brushed off and told to get back into position to close out the game. 

It was a rare instance of Gignac being denied this season. The 28-year-old is riding the crest of a wave, with his 9 goals in 9 Ligue 1 matches earning him a recall to the France side from Didier Deschamps after over a year out of the picture. The case for his inclusion was overwhelming, with his start to the campaign his best-ever by some distance – his previous best was when scoring 5 in the first 9, for Toulouse in 2008-09 and for Marseille in 2011-12.  

As the ferocity with which Saturday’s winner hit the net reminded us, the sheer power of Gignac’s shooting is something to behold. He let fly with 6 efforts on goal at Caen, reflecting his will to force the issue as his team battled for the points, though his goals through the season so far have come at a rate of 3.9 shots per game. 

The amount of chances that Bielsa’s team create would be helpful to any striker, but where Gignac has really flourished under the Argentinian is in a simplification of his role. Gignac likes to dribble, but has not been required to do so much. No team in Europe’s top leagues has completed as many dribbles as Marseille this season (111), but Gianelli Imbula, Dimitri Payet, André Ayew, Florian Thauvin and Brice Dja Djédjé have all completed more dribbles than Gignac. Even full-back Benjamin Mendy averages the same amount per game as the forward (0.8). Gignac’s job is simply to take the chances that come his way.

There is definitely room for that sort of pure centre-forward in Deschamps’ group, with Karim Benzema more of a linking forward as well as a goalscorer. What has been more controversial in France this week than Gignac’s selection has been the non-inclusion of Alexandre Lacazette. The Lyon man responded in the most emphatic way possible on Sunday, hitting a hat-trick to help his side to a 3-0 victory over Lille. 

It was the 23-year-old’s strongest performance of the season, taking him into WhoScored’s Team of the Week with a rating of 9.63. Like Gignac, he hit more shots than normal (6, as opposed to a season average of 4.0 per game) but was clinical, getting four on target, including the three that beat Vincent Enyeama, arguably the division’s best goalkeeper.

“I know well that with this hat-trick and my not getting picked people are going to talk,” Lacazette said after the game, “but that’s not the most important thing. Of course I was disappointed on Thursday (the day of Deschamps’ squad announcement), but it’s not over. I’m going to work again.”

Work is one of the key tenets of Lacazette’s game. Having first broken into Lyon’s first-team as a winger, required to put in the hard yards down the right-hand side, he was moved to centre-forward last season – after Lisandro Lopez’s exit – to spectacular effect. He scored 15 Ligue 1 goals, out of a total of 22 in all competitions. He has 7 in 9 (with 1 assist) to date in this Ligue 1 season.

Lacazette’s all-round game is based around movement and really working defenders. He holds onto the ball well, and is a more accomplished dribbler than Gignac, for example, averaging 2.8 this season. He wins his share of free-kicks too, being fouled an average 2.2 times per game. Given his contrasting attributes to Gignac, there is no real sense of the pair competing for a place. The most obvious competition for Lacazette in a France context is Loïc Rémy, four years older than him, yet to start a Premier League game for Chelsea and probably unlikely to play too many during the season should Diego Costa remain fit.

Deschamps has even more quality at his disposal should he wish to switch things around, with Wissam Ben Yedder of Toulouse also enjoying a hot streak. His winner at Saint Etienne on Sunday afternoon was his sixth in 9 Ligue 1 games, and meant he has now scored in four successive league matches. Ben Yedder’s goals are invariably big ones, having already scored against Paris Saint-Germain, away at Rennes and what turned out to be the decisive goal against Lyon this season.

Having laid the foundations of his career in futsal, Ben Yedder is a strikingly different proposition to either Gignac or Lacazette. That his finishing is excellent is self-evident, but his technical excellence defines his game, as he still uses the one and two-touch style of his youth, and is consequently strong in giving through balls and key passes (averaging 1.8 per game this season in the latter discipline). He supplied 5 assists in Ligue 1, as well scoring 16 times, last season. Most good things that Toulouse do revolve around Ben Yedder, who has scored 46% of his side’s goals – incidentally, Lacazette has scored 47% of Lyon’s; the two biggest contributions in the French top flight.

If the composition of Deschamps’ squad is a subject for discussion, it tells us two things. Firstly, he has options. Secondly, he has room to change his mind. With France expected to entertain as well as get results in the run-up to Euro 2016, he is lucky to have such food for thought.

Which strikers do you think should be called up for France? Let us know in the comments below