France are in America, and Boston is already losing its mind about it. Kylian Mbappe, Ousmane Dembele, and Michael Olise stepped off the plane at Logan Airport Wednesday afternoon and were met by hundreds of fans who'd been waiting outside the Four Seasons on Boylston Street for hours — autographs, photos, the full circus.
Les Bleus have booked out the entire 239-room hotel for the duration of the tournament. All of it. June 11 through July 19. That's the kind of logistical muscle only the top-tier nations bring to a World Cup, and it signals exactly how seriously Didier Deschamps' squad is treating this.
How France's group stage sets up
They open against Senegal on June 16 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford — a tough enough test to remind anyone who's written off African sides at major tournaments. Senegal aren't the soft opener some might assume. France will need to be sharp from the jump.
The match that will really get the temperature rising in New England comes later: June 26 at Gillette Stadium — rebranded "Boston Stadium" for the tournament — against Norway. Erling Haaland and Mbappe in the same postcode. France's defensive odds for that one will be worth watching as the date approaches.
Training happens at Bentley University in Waltham, where athletics director Vaughn Williams made the appeal plain: closed sessions, no cameras, controlled environment. "We provided that, which is a hard thing to do, obviously, in the States," he told The Boston Globe. For a squad carrying the weight of two consecutive World Cup finals — winners in 2018, runners-up in 2022 — that kind of preparation structure matters.
France arrive as one of the genuine favorites. The squad depth is real, the motivation after losing to Argentina in Qatar is real, and Mbappe — whatever drama surrounded his club season — tends to show up when the stakes are highest.
Boston has a World Cup team for the next six weeks. They seem thrilled about it.
