| Chaos Theory suggests that if a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian rainforest, it can change the weather half a world away, so with the France international football team in something of a state of disharmony, it seemed fitting that Didier Deschamps’ press conference ahead of his side’s Nations League match against Belgium this evening was interrupted by a winged insect from the lepidopteran suborder Rhopalocera flapping beside his head. “This is an example of the countryside,” observed the France head coach, prompting the kind of overzealous and forced laughter you only hear at such events. “The Neuilly countryside,” he added, referring to the area west of Paris in which his squad were cloistered before their trip to Brussels. Although we can only speculate over the more widespread effect of a butterfly flapping its wings in the presence of the France gaffer, in the short-term it did at least provide him with some very temporary respite from having to answer irritating questions about Kylian Mbappé. While the official line is that the World Cup-winning striker and French captain is absent from the squad with his manager’s blessing as he recovers from a thigh injury, the fact that he started for Real Madrid in their most recent match just before the international break has led to fan speculation that he is cherry-picking which France games he plays in and may have fallen out with Deschamps. “Didier spoke with Mbappé directly and with the medical staff at Real Madrid and chose not to select him but it doesn’t call into question Kylian’s attachment to the national team,” said Philippe Diallo, the president of the French Football Federation, when quizzed about the skipper’s absence, while Deschamps was forced to field questions about an alleged sighting of his star player’s disco-dancing in a Stockholm nightclub on the same evening France were gubbing League A Group 2 whipping boys Israel. “I don’t follow the news of players who are not here,” said Deschamps. “Kylian is following a programme with Real Madrid, I don’t know if he was away or not. Like any player for his club, he follows a programme. If players have days off, they are free to do what they want.” While France bounced back from home defeat to Italy in their Nations League opener with back-to-back wins over Belgium and Israel, the unexpected retirement of Antoine Griezmann a fortnight ago has left many fans of Les Bleus disillusioned. Capped 137 times for his country, Grizi’s commitment to the French cause was never called into question but he is believed to have felt hard done by at being overlooked when Deschamps handed the captain’s armband to Mbappé following the retirement of Hugo Lloris. “He said that it affected him,” said Griezmann’s former teammate Olivier Giroud in an interview with Téléfoot. “He didn’t hide it. It’s legitimate; it’s normal.” With Giroud also having put himself out to international pasture and Mbappé still absent this evening, it seems little short of remarkable that the France squad in Brussels for tonight’s game contains not a single member of the travelling party that won the World Cup in 2018. It’s small wonder that, like so many papillons, French fans are getting themselves in a flap. | 