It was a typical, garbage Saturday afternoon. Rain was hammering down, and my usual plan of trying to fix that leaky faucet went straight out the window. My buddy, Mike, swings by unannounced, looking bored out of his mind. We ended up just scrolling through streaming services, complaining that nothing good was on. Eventually, we settled on some ancient football highlights—stuff from the mid-90s, when defending still felt like a real sport.
That got us talking, obviously. One thing led to another, and we were suddenly arguing about the greatest World Cup team ever assembled. Mike was pushing for the 70 Brazil squad, which, yeah, fine, but I was stuck on the 1998 French team. They won at home, they had flair, and they had Zidane—the man just floating across the pitch.
The conversation inevitably turned competitive. Mike, puffing out his chest, said he could list the full starting XI plus all the substitutes for France ’98, just off the top of his head. I laughed right in his face. “Go on then, genius,” I challenged him. “Name all 22.” We put a friendly twenty bucks on it, just to make it interesting.
The Practice: Hunting Down The Unsung Heroes
We grabbed the laptop. The starting lineup was easy enough; those names are etched in memory. We quickly wrote down Barthez, Thuram, Blanc, Desailly, Lizarazu. Solid back five. Then the midfield: Deschamps, Karembeu, Petit, Djorkaeff, Zidane. And Guivarc’h upfront. We ticked off eleven names in maybe two minutes flat.
But that’s where the fun ended and the actual work began. Mike got stuck immediately trying to remember the backup strikers and the third-choice keeper. This is where I had to step in and start the deep research, meticulously digging up the official roster list to shut him up and claim the twenty quid.
I punched in about five different search combinations just to make sure I wasn’t relying on some half-baked Wikipedia entry. You know how it is—one site says 22 players, another accidentally lists 23 because some injured guy was initially named. I had to cross-reference official FIFA records from back then. It felt like I was doing forensic accounting, not looking up old sports trivia.
First, I needed to verify the goaltenders. Barthez was a lock, obviously. Llama was the reliable backup. But the third guy? That name always escapes everyone. I finally tracked down the full goalkeeper list and confirmed it was Bernard Lama and Lionel Charbonnier backing up Fabien Barthez. That was three down, eight more subs to go.
Then I focused on defense. Beyond the obvious starters, who were the relief pitchers? I had to sort through names that felt ancient.
- Laurent Blanc (The Captain, The Kiss Guy)
- Marcel Desailly (The Rock)
- Lilian Thuram (The Engine)
- Bixente Lizarazu (The Left Flank Master)
- Vincent Candela
- Alain Boghossian (Wait, I initially misfiled him as a defender, but he was a midfielder. Had to go back and re-categorize him.)
- Frank Leboeuf (The Big Backup)
- Martin Djetou (That was the tricky one. Almost forgot him entirely.)
I started to realize something about this roster as I was compiling it: the sheer, insane depth. These weren’t just filler players; these were solid professionals who, in any other year, would have been starting for other top nations. The team was ridiculously stacked.
The Midfield and Attack Compilation
The midfield was the heart of the team, and even the backups were legends. I checked off Deschamps and Petit, the tireless holding pair. Zidane was the maestro, no debate. But the sheer number of quality utility players was impressive:
- Emmanuel Petit
- Didier Deschamps
- Zinedine Zidane
- Youri Djorkaeff
- Christian Karembeu
- Robert Pires (Young, but already a serious talent)
- Patrick Vieira (Another young gun who was essential)
- Alain Boghossian (The utility knife)
We finally moved to the strikers. Everyone remembers Guivarc’h because, well, he started the final and didn’t score. But the bench held the real firepower. I had to remind Mike that the 1998 squad famously didn’t score many goals from their actual strikers, relying heavily on the midfield and defenders (like Thuram and Petit in the final).
The forward line I managed to confirm included:
- Stéphane Guivarc’h
- Christophe Dugarry (That was the name Mike couldn’t get! Twenty bucks secured!)
- Thierry Henry (A baby-faced legend in the making)
- David Trezeguet (Another teenage phenomenon)
The Realization After The Roster Was Completed
After I finally laid out the confirmed list of all 22 names, Mike just silently handed over the cash. But the real takeaway wasn’t the twenty dollars; it was the view of the entire structure. I spent a good hour just staring at the list I had painstakingly put together.
This wasn’t just a collection of great players; it was a perfect ecosystem. Every single role, from the starting central defender to the fourth-choice forward, was filled by a man who was ready to step up and deliver when called upon. They had youth (Henry, Trezeguet, Vieira) balanced perfectly with grizzled experience (Blanc, Deschamps, Desailly).
I had gone into this task just trying to win a stupid bet about obscure substitute names, but I walked away with a deeper appreciation of what made that team truly legendary. They weren’t just lucky winners on home soil; they were a machine built for that tournament, with every spare part accounted for. It shows you that in any big project—whether it’s football or your job—the success often relies just as much on the quality of the people on the bench, ready to jump in, as it does on the star players.
It was a tedious hour of verification work, but seeing that full roster written out felt like discovering a treasure map. I learned a ton, and yeah, I got twenty bucks too.
