It has not always been easy for a neutral observer to get behind Adrien Rabiot, whose dependency on the pitch has been repeatedly concealed by a curious, maddening penchant for irritating coaches, clubs and team-mates as much as opponents.
Yet if France are to reach an unprecedented third straight final, and wrest back the trophy from Argentina’s grasp, Didier Deschamps needs his team’s maligned midfield mainstay to keep pursuing what seems a neverending path to proving critics wrong.
Rabiot has come a long way from emailing Deschamps eight years ago to say he would not accept a place on the standby list for the 2018 World Cup in which Les Bleus ground their way to glory. Not long after that he was jettisoned by Paris Saint-Germain because of a dispute in which his mother and agent, Veronique, was infamously prominent.
But Rabiot began to grow at Juventus, leading to Andrea Pirlo, who served as head coach of the Old Lady for a spell, to declare him as a “complete” midfielder who could combine the technical and physical side of the game. High praise from one of the great purveyors of the former who struggled with the latter.
Gradually, Rabiot clawed his way back to the national team set-up and by Qatar was a crucial cog on the path to the greatest World Cup final of all, though he missed the last-four win against Morocco owing to illness.
Now Rabiot is one of Deschamps’ key lieutenants, among the cleanest players to carry out the dirty work, and a figure who is clearly more appreciated by his present team-mates than many of those who have gone before – not least former Marseille colleague Jonathan Rowe, with whom he had a changing room scrap that led to both players being sold last year.
“A guy with incredible resilience,” Kylian Mbappe said of Rabiot before the tournament got underway. “No matter what gets said about him, what happens to him, the guy’s always there. He’s weathered storms and gales and, when you look at his career, his CV speaks for itself.”
It is still missing a World Cup. But if Mbappe is to win his second, the leading star knows the less flashy presence two rows behind will be relied on intensely.
Maybe not against Iraq in Philadelphia on Monday night but from the group closer against Norway on Friday and into the knockout stages, it should become increasingly clear that this iteration of the fraternité is far more than the front four.
For all the criticism of Deschamps’ vague philosophy he has always considered balance a central tenet of all gameplans. So by committing to such a luxurious attack, the emphasis on Rabiot and Aurelien Tchouameni to bring control behind the chaos is even greater than before.
“With Aurelien, we need to maintain this balance,” Rabiot said before the tournament began. “We’re not restricted by the coach but, in this setup, we need to find the right adjustments with the four key attacking players who can make the difference.”
The early signs are promising. Rabiot’s pass to Bradley Barcola for France’s second against Senegal was exquisite, among the assists of the tournament to date, and he got through the standard pile of unseen work against an opponent whose mobility would upset plenty of teams.
There is an elegance to Rabiot that has often been overlooked by the perception of him being a workhorse; a misreading no doubt enhanced by him sharing a pitch with some of the game’s most thrilling forwards.
His physical capacity perhaps limits the appreciation of the technical side too. A team in which a gifted centre-forward has been fairly criticised for an unrivalled lack of work ethic off the ball requires the rest to be committed.
Deschamps knows that in Rabiot he can place unwavering faith to keep running, keep battling and keep trying – even if his inclusion seems destined to be forever questioned.
