Well, who saw that coming?Not France, that’s for sure.Rayan Cherki captured the sense of shock and despair among the France players on a day when their World Cup dream died, in a 2-0 defeat to Spain that was as emphatic as the scoreline suggests.“It’s an immense disappointment,” Cherki said. “Today we lost against ourselves. We didn’t lose against the referee, we didn’t lose against Spain, we lost against ourselves. You all know that everyone was scared of us. The only team who were capable of eliminating us was ourselves. Today is terrible.”Asked what France lacked in their performance, Cherki replied: “Everything. We were beaten technically, we were beaten tactically, we were beaten in the duels.”It was a scathing assessment. France, the World Cup favourites, were outplayed, outfought and outthought, which is a compliment to their opponents first and foremost. Not for the first time, Spain demonstrated that their controlled brand of football – a mix of patience, precision and penetration – is too much for France.Two years ago, Didier Deschamps’ side were beaten 2-1 by Spain in a European Championship semi-final. Last summer, Spain won 5-4 against France in the Nations League semi-final. This victory, on the biggest stage of all, made it three semi-final victories in a row for Spain against the same opponents and, from a France point of view, it will be the most difficult to take.The 2026 World Cup was supposed to be France’s time. The No 1 ranked team in the tournament, the most devastating forward line in world football, and a manager ready to sign off after 12 years in charge with the greatest prize in the sport – all roads pointed to New York for Sunday’s final.Instead, France will travel to Miami for a third-place play-off, wondering how and why everything unravelled so badly on a Tuesday afternoon in Dallas, where a team that had lit up this World Cup with its exhilarating attacking play, scoring freely and appearing to be unstoppable, looked unrecognisable.Questions will be asked about Didier Deschamps’ tactics, in particular whether it was naive of the France manager to think that playing four out-and-out-attackers – an approach that had paid rich dividends up until now – would work against a team as good with the ball as Spain.