World champions turn up rarely at Real Betis, Seville’s charismatic, well-supported but not exactly trophy-laden club.
Hence the air of disbelief amid the self-congratulation at the signing of Nabil Fekir, the French playmaker who has just swapped the captaincy of Olympique Lyonnais for a Betis who finished 10th in last season’s Primera Liga.
Fekir is 26, peak age for an attacking footballer and, 12 months ago, he seemed set to join Liverpool for fee close to €60 million (Dh246m) until the English club developed doubts about his full recovery from a knee injury.
Lyon will now pick up just under €20m from Betis, although that signals not a slump in his valuation as much as the fact he would have been out of contract next year. Fekir is a special talent, and he remains a part of France’s future plans.
He was among the 11 Frenchmen on the pitch when the last World Cup was won. Hence the raised eyebrows at his joining a club with no European football immediately on their horizon.
What is not a surprise is that a champion Bleu is on the move. It is barely a year since France's history-makers were cavorting around in the torrential Moscow rain with their gold medals dangling around their necks; hardly had they taken their boots off than most were experiencing very itchy feet.
Like Fekir, who came on as a substitute in the 4-2 final win over Croatia, Antoine Griezmann, who led the Bleus attack, has just joined a Liga club. Griezmann made his first appearance for Barcelona on Tuesday in a friendly against Chelsea, having agreed with Barca they would pay the €120m of his buyout clause at Atletico Madrid.
Griezmann-to-Camp-Nou has been a saga in two parts; the World Cup was the dividing point. Before it, Griezmann turned down the Barcelona option, to stay for a fifth season with Atletico. But, as a world champion, his ambitions in club football have grown.
The full-backs who established themselves in France’s back four during the World Cup, Benjamin Pavard and Lucas Hernandez, have moved, too, as if in the same synchronised tandem they worked on successfully over the course of the tournament.
Bayern Munich saw enough of them in Russia to make prompt plans for a double swoop: Hernandez had agreed to leave Atletico for Bayern for close to €80m well ahead of his official touchdown in Munich this summer. Pavard’s terms, with a €35m fee to Stuttgart, were agreed by early 2019.
The next of the world champions to move on? Perhaps Blaise Matuidi, whose two-season spell at Juventus looks likely to end given the heavy recruitment of midfielders at the Italian club this summer.
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At 32, Matuidi still has plenty of his high-energy game to contribute to an elite club, and strong prospects of adding more caps to his 81.
Others have made it plain they want to take their World Cup pedigree elsewhere. Paul Pogba’s enthusiasm for alternatives to a Manchester United who are not in the next Champions League have been voiced long and loud by his advisers, hopeful Juventus or Real Madrid will act.
As for Samuel Umtiti, the defender who scored the winning goal in the World Cup semi-final against Belgium and who pressed his club Barcelona aggressively for an improved contract in the lead-up to Russia, he has since seen his place in Barca’s hierarchy loosen a little.
Umtiti may be offered to Paris Saint-Germain if a deal to bring Neymar back to Catalonia from Paris seems achievable. Meanwhile, Olivier Giroud, who was France’s preferred target man up front at the World Cup, is still with Chelsea, although it is understood he was tempted by a transfer this close-season until the London club activated an extension clause in his deal.
Even Kylian Mbappe, cherished at PSG, finished his stellar 2018-19 with a studied public statement, hinting at restlessness: “I am at a crossroads,” he said, “and ready to take on more responsibilities, maybe at PSG, but maybe somewhere else.”
Mbappe will not be easily shifted from the Paris club, but he nurses a fierce ambition. In Moscow he became a world champion as a teenager. He expects his early 20s to be festooned with major club prizes.
And when he reports for duty in September with his national team, he will hear many, many team-mates talking excitedly about life at their new employers.
