Five months on and Olivier Giroud still struggles to get his head around the fact he is a World Cup winner. Reality kicks in on occasion. Most obviously there was the moment on the open-top bus, crawling down the Champs Élysées in mid-July serenaded by half a million compatriots, when nine air force jets roared overhead trailing red, white and blue in their plumes and he felt “like a rock star”. He will receive a replica of the trophy any day now to sit alongside the framed photograph of his eldest daughter, Jade, kissing the real thing amid the ticker tape and pyrotechnics at the Luzhniki.
Then, more recently, there was a conversation on the Chelsea bus on the way back from a sobering midweek defeat by Wolverhampton Wanderers. Eden Hazard, Antonio Rüdiger, Mateo Kovacic and Giroud sat digesting the result and its implications for their title challenge. “It was a long journey and Rüdi was teasing me: ‘Anyway, what do you care? You won the World Cup’,” he said. “Mateo, who’s won three Champions Leagues, said there is nothing above the World Cup. So maybe people do see me differently, especially in the dressing room. I’ve been blessed but I’ve always said football is an everlasting new beginning. You can’t rest on your laurels. You have to prove yourself again.
“Anyway, there has been no time to sit and take it all in. You’d think when you win the World Cup you’d have festivities for weeks but we went straight back to our base in Istra, an hour outside Moscow. We spent time with the families but it was a bit ‘soft’. We didn’t go crazy. I’d achieved a childhood dream and I knew I had the best job ever when the jets flew over on the Champs Élysées. But then we had 19 days’ holiday, everyone going their separate ways, and when we got back together [in September] we had another competition to play.
“What you do notice is the effect it had on France. There had been the attacks in 2015 and I know we have problems now [with violent protests against Emmanuel Macron by the gilets jaunes movement] but we united the nation for a while. Football is the best thing to bring people together. That was clear from the impact we had on society in France. People forgot their worries, went into the streets and just celebrated. We are not a nation in wartime at home but we go through tough times. And yet football can be so good, it’s crazy. It’s good for the mental health of the people.”
This seemed an apt time for Giroud to reflect on a year like no other. Retreat to last Christmas and he was entering the final six months of his contract at Arsenal, where his unsatisfactory status as a Premier League substitute and Europa League starter was potentially jeopardising a place at the tournament in Russia. Chelsea offered him the chance to play while still enjoying “London life” with a deal to 2019. Arsenal’s club calendar carries his image this month as Mr December but Giroud has long since moved on.
The 32-year-old is settled, feeling as if he has “been here a few years already”. Off the pitch, his profile is so elevated he has taken the first step towards a Hollywood career as the voice of the Green Goblin in the French version of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. One of his national teammates, Presnel Kimpembe, plays Scorpion, though both claim dubbing an animated film has rather stymied their ability to show their acting skills.
It was the summer that truly transformed Giroud. This was a player jeered by France fans, disgruntled at Karim Benzema’s non-selection while police investigated his alleged involvement in a blackmail case, despite scoring in a friendly win over Cameroon in Nantes just before Euro 2016. L’Équipe’s front page had christened him “Le mal aimé” (“The unloved one”), with his teammates inducing a chuckle by chorusing the Claude François song of the same name on the coach back to Clairefontaine.
“That was the toughest time. I never had a problem with Karim, even if he is not my best friend, and we always spent good time in the national team. But people portrayed us as fighting. The fans were not happy with me: not my contribution or performance on the pitch, but because I was there and Benzema was not. And that was just before I had a good Euros. The coach defended me because it was injustice. My performances were good. It was not me, the one to blame.”
Recalling that criticism was poignant. Giroud was speaking at an event at Stamford Bridge to discuss social media and its impact on isolation at Christmas. Players from the club’s academy were in attendance, together with pupils from five secondary schools at which the Chelsea Foundation has placed full-time staff aiming to enhance and develop emotional wellbeing and resilience among the students. Giroud, alongside his clubmate Rob Green, listened to and engaged with the teenagers as they spoke on topics ranging from online bullying to loneliness.
The striker is on Twitter, which he uses largely to promote charitable work with the Monaco Humanitarian Collective, but has always been wary of abuse that can poison. “You can read so many bad things even on the best players of the world and it cannot help your mental health. I know when I play well or not, so I don’t need people to tell me. For me, mental strength is at least 80% of a sportsman’s quality. If you don’t have it you cannot be successful because even talent is not sufficient. I play with so many players who are better than me, technically, so you need to be strong.” He had steered clear of the platform during the summer. Giroud’s World Cup had been was scoreless, the striker effectively acting as a decoy, creating space and opportunities for Kylian Mbappé and Antoine Griezmann. The comparisons to Stéphane Guivarc’h from 1998 were easily drawn.
“As a striker it is obviously frustrating,” he sighedsaid. “But if you ask Harry Kane if he would give up the six goals he scored in Russia for the World Cup, he would say: ‘Oh yeah, take the Golden Boot too.’ If I’d scored, and Mbappé hadn’t put the ball in the back of the net against Peru [when Giroud’s shot was looping in], maybe we wouldn’t have won it. It was destiny. It will be always a ‘small pinch’ in my heart, but I know my contribution.
“When you are only behind for nine minutes through the whole competition, what is the most important thing? To keep the result. I’ve never defended as much as against Belgium in the semi-final. I was playing as a No 6. Obviously you always have haters who say: ‘yYou didn’t score,’, but I know how many I have for the French team.”
It was telling that his teammates urged him to take the penalty that beat Uruguay in their final game of a glittering calendar year last month. That was a 33rd goal in 87 caps.
Chelsea’s players appreciate him just as much. Hazard has not scored this season without Giroud on the pitch and yet the striker has made only five top-flight starts. Not that he has any complaints. He returned later than Álvaro Morata, with whom he generally vies for inclusion but who has a slight knee injury, and considers their duel “fair competition”. “Álvaro made a great pre-season, so it was normal not to take him off the team even to put in a world champion. Let’s be patient, work in training and come back stronger.
“I prefer to be at a big club rather than playing every week in a less prestigious team and I still have targets. To win a Premier League is my last dream as a footballer, maybe more than winning a Champions League, because I know how tough it is to win this league. I have teammates here who have won it, so I’m a bit jealous. I want to make it happen. I don’t want to end with any regrets.”
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