All hail king Giroud
As Kylian Mbappe marches towards football greatness, his much-maligned strike partner is already there.
They share the top two sports on the goals-for ladder through the group stage and the R16 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. They also share two positions in the same forward line, and, over the past four years their careers – at opposite ends of their journeys - have intersected at a most tumultuous and fruitful juncture in the history of their national team.
One of them is Kylian Mbappe, the other one is France’s all-time top scorer. Mbappe’s is a young but remarkable career. At 23 years-of-age and with 33 international goals to his name, he’s on track to surpass the other man’s record by the time he’s 25 – the exact age Olivier Giroud’s international goal-scoring feats were beginning.
If Mbappe is remarkable in the achievements of his youth, Giroud is remarkable in the longevity and ageless quality of his career.
Giroud has won league titles in France and Italy and the Champions League while at Chelsea. He was instrumental in helping Mbappe pilot France to a World Cup win in 2018, and is playing an equally key role four years later.
For a player often seen as a ballast to the faster, more creative sparks around him, the 36 year-old has an awful lot of goals in his locker too, more than Thierry Henry and for the time being, more than Mbappe.
He’s got spectacular highlight reel goals. AC Milan fans will tell you he’s got crucial Serie A-winning goals, and, in an era defined by the absence of one of the greatest current strikers in the game – Karim Benzema – Giroud has important goals for Les Bleus.
Setting all that aside, what is most striking about Giroud is how much French fans love him. At the Al Janoub Stadium in France’s first match of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the army of blue-clad French supporters sat in stunned silence. Lucas Hernandez was being helped from the field and, ultimately, the tournament.
The scoreline read 0-1 and Craig Goodwin and the Socceroos were in the ascendancy. Quick goals from Adrien Rabiot and Giroud changed the mood.
In the second half France was running towards the sea of Les Bleus supporters. The first time the ball came near Giroud the fans woke up, starting a low chant that reached a crescendo when the oldest player France has ever fielded at a World Cup launched into the air, flipped and attempted one of his trademark bicycle kicks.
Giroud the showman knows his audience and they lap him up, not with a ‘Lord Bendtner’-type ironic adulation but with a hard-earned respect that comes with delivering time and again on the biggest stages.
Part of the fabric of that respect is that many of Giroud’s opportunities have come via injuries to others. Consider Zlatan Ibrahimovic at Milan, or Benzema here in Qatar. When called to do a job, Giroud has rarely, if ever, let his club, or his national team, down.
By the time Les Bleus were easing past Poland and into the quarter-finals, Giroud had a third goal, to be nipping at the heels of the man who will more than likely break his national record by the time he’s 25. The same age Giroud’s remarkable, unconventional international career was beginning.
