Hugo ready for kick-off with ‘very competitive’ France

France begin their defence of the World Cup against Australia in Group D tonight (Tuesday 22 November, 7pm UK), with Hugo Lloris promising: “We still have a very competitive team.”

Champions in 2018, Les Bleus will naturally have targets on their backs as they look to add to their legacy at this year’s tournament in Qatar.

Despite a lengthy injury list including the likes of Karim Benzema, N’Golo Kante, Presnel Kimpembe, Paul Pogba and Christopher Nkunku, goalkeeper and captain Hugo believes his nation has what it takes to have another successful campaign.

“For France, it’s going to be a big challenge because we won the last one and obviously every team, they are going to be very excited to face France and to try to beat us,” he said.

“It’s going to be very interesting – I believe we still have a very competitive team and even if we are going to miss important players, France is going to be strong. But if you want to have a successful competition, you have to respond well in all aspects of the game and we will try to do this.”

First up for Didier Deschamps’ men is a coincidental repeat of their opening game from four years ago, where only a late own goal gave them a 2-1 victory against a talented Australia side.

Ahead of the match in Al Wakrah, Hugo has underlined the need to maintain focus from the off and try to build some winning momentum in this early part of the tournament.

“There are no easy games at this level,” he said. “The only difference is in the group stage, you have three games to go through and then after that, it’s a new competition that is going to start where you know that if you lose, you go home. Every game is a challenge, a battle… we need to be focused on the group stage, playing first Australia and then Denmark against Pierre (Emile Hojbjerg) and Christian (Eriksen), and then we finish against Tunisia. So there is no easy game and we will make sure that we do everything to go through.”