With 145 selections, Hugo Lloris has the selection record for the French team. But another player holds a record with the Blues, more unusual.
For a football player, playing in the national team is often a dream, a goal to achieve which proves that the player has achieved a certain recognition and regularity at the highest level. The national selection also allows you to compete in the biggest competitions and dream of becoming world champion or European champion, an achievable goal this summer for the Blues who are preparing to compete in Euro 2024.
Among the biggest selections, the French team is one of the nations with the fiercest competition. Also, if some have become permanent fixtures over the years and made the legend of the Blues, others simply spent a short time at Clairefontaine. Others have even become famous for being selected for a major competition without participating in any minute, the famous “hairdressers”.
With 145 caps, Hugo Lloris holds the record for selection for the French team. He surpassed Lilian Thuram’s 142 caps in the quarter-finals of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. But another player holds an astonishing record in the French team. Indeed, with 55 caps, Bayern Munich winger Kingsley Coman is not yet one of the most capped players. However, it has one particularity. The 27-year-old striker has never participated in a full match with the France team!
An international since 2015, Coman was present at the 2022 World Cup, as well as the 2016 and 2021 European Championships, without ever playing the full 90 minutes of a match. The winger, who scored eight goals for the national team, never established himself as an indisputable starter in the mind of Didier Deschamps and was often in competition with Ousmane Dembélé, Randal Kolo Muani, or even Anthony Martial.
This replacement of Kingsley Coman during the match, which has become systematic in the France team, also comes and can be mainly from his style of play, based on quite unique physical abilities and explosiveness. A strong point which has its drawback: it is particularly energy-intensive. Also, Coman, who generally starts in his club Bayern Munich, is also regularly replaced with the German team, undoubtedly for the same reasons.
This curious record could extend during Kingsley Coman’s next selections in the run-up to the Euro in Germany next June. Injured during the last rally but present in Didier Deschamps’ list of 25, the Bayern Munich striker should be present at the Euro. However, uncertainty remains following a new injury in mid-April with Bayern. Once again, the Blues aim to win the title during this Euro 2024. If the French team wins the championship and Coman participates in all the matches without playing them in their entirety, he will thus carry this record at 62 matches.