

Although he wore the umber 10 shirt, it was clear that Andre-Pierre Gignac wasn't Karim Benzema. As Alvaro Arbeloa said via Twitter after the final: not bringing the best centre-forward in the world was detrimental for France. Now the rest of the country will blame last Sunday's loss to not bringing Karim to the tournament, and the Tigres striker is already being treated unfairly on social media. But it really wasn't his fault, Gignac was devastated after the defeat.
He told the press that: "I think that we were the strongest for 90 minutes. We've been unlucky. That's football. The truth is they were waiting for us with a false rhythm. They killed us during the extra time. It's awful. It's a nightmare. It's really terrible. We were playing the final, there is no way to get tired. What happened just happened, it's a twist of fate. We got some chances and touched the woodwork at the 92nd minute. The ball could have bounce back to Griezi [Antoine Griezmann] but it went wide."
However, Gignac thinks France left a good image throughout the whole tournament despite not being able to keep the trophy home: "We must look at the bright side. I think we had a strong French national side that restored our image. We'll have to swallow [defeat]. It's going to be difficult to do so. We'll have s***ty holidays. We'll need to quickly bounce back because there are the World Cup qualifying games ahead of us."
Photo credit: Equipe de France