In the latest round of qualifying matches for Euro 2020, reigning world champions France took on Iceland at the Laugardalsvöllur stadium in Reykjavík. One would have expected Les Bleus to have had no trouble in dispatching the Icelandic team, but such was not the case. France were well below their best against Iceland, squandering many goalscoring opportunities and playing a rather discombobulated and disjointed game. It took a 66th-minute penalty scored by Olivier Giroud to give France a 1-0 victory.
There were several possible reasons behind France's unimpressive performance. Fatigue, underestimation of their opponent, poor tactical planning - any of those could be cited. However, one of the key reasons behind France's diminished level of play against Iceland was the absence of their best and most influential player.
Although Giroud's Chelsea teammate N'Golo Kanté had initially been named to France's starting 11 before the match, he suffered an injury during the warmups and was replaced by Moussa Sissoko. Kanté's absence was clearly felt as France were nowhere near the level at which they are capable of playing; had they been playing against a better team, they would not have escaped with a 1-0 win.
It's impossible to understate how important Kanté is to this France team.
During France's victorious World Cup run last year, he was arguably the best player on the team. Kanté and Paul Pogba formed a central midfield pairing for the ages; the two midfield superstars' play served as the foundation for France's World Cup victory. It was Kanté who controlled the tempo of each game, ruined many an opponent's offensive foray, played stellar defense on all his opposing matchups, and served as the conduit through which many of France's moves leading to goals went. The tournament clearly established Kanté as the world's best defensive midfielder.
I'll go a step further than that; in my opinion, N'Golo Kanté is the best defensive midfielder since Rino Gattuso was in his prime (who, by the way, is the player whom I consider to be the greatest defensive midfielder ever).
You can give me names such as Xabi Alonso, Claude Makélélé, Sergio Busquets, Yaya Touré, and so many others - at his peak, I'm taking Kanté over all of them.
Perhaps the most obvious example of the "Kanté effect" was shown through what happened to his former club Leicester City after his departure.
With Kanté on the team, the Foxes defied the odds to beat every other leading team in the Premier League and win the league title in the 2015-16 season. In the ensuing off-season, Chelsea paid £32 million to sign Kanté. The effects of the signing were instant; Chelsea easily won the 2016-17 Premier League and also reached the final of the FA Cup. Leicester, on the other hand, finished 12th despite keeping almost everyone else who had been on their league-winning squad from the previous season.
For his efforts that season, Kanté would be named the Premier League's Player of the Season and finished in the top 10 of the 2017 Ballon d'Or rankings. At this point, it was now obvious: Leicester's success during the previous season had not been primarily due to Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez, Kasper Schmeichel, Wes Morgan, or even Claudio Ranieri. That Leicester team was Kanté's team from start to finish, and Leicester's and Kanté's respective performances since his departure from Leicester have proven this fact.
Whether for club or country, Kanté is truly "the straw that stirs the drink" - no matter how great the players around him are, the team simply will not function as it should without Kanté. He is one of a select few players in the world of whom such a compliment can be paid.
With Euro 2020 less than a year away, France have the opportunity to go one better than their runner-up finish in the 2016 edition. If Kanté is once again at the top of his game during the tournament, they have an excellent chance to go all the way and win their third continental crown.
History also beckons in another way for Kanté - should he remain at this level for three more years and anchor a successful defense of France's World Cup title in Qatar in 2022, I believe that the Parisian will go down as the undisputed greatest defensive midfielder of all time.
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