ILLNESS has swept through the France World Cup camp on the eve of their semi-final.
The reigning champions face Morocco at the Al Bayt Stadium on Wednesday evening.
But their preparations have been hit with a major blow with a bug spreading within the squad.
Dayot Upamecano and Adrien Rabiot were both forced to sit out of training today.
And they are said to be serious doubts for the clash with Morocco.
Upamecano has a sore throat while Rabiot is also under the weather.
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It means Liverpool’s Ibrahima Konate and Youssef Fofana are on standby in case the first-choice duo cannot recover in time.
Konate and Fofana were drafted in against Tunisia while William Saliba, Matteo Guendouzi, Eduardo Camavinga and Jordan Veretout are alternative options for Deschamps.
Rabiot has played in all five matches while Upamecano was rested for the defeat to Tunisia after qualification for the knockout rounds was already secured.
They both played the full 90 minutes of Les Bleus’ 2-1 quarter-final win over England on Saturday and Deschamps wanted to keep an unchanged XI.
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Upamecano came under criticism for his poor defending against Harry Kane throughout the match.
Rabiot, meanwhile, caused controversy by claiming Kane’s penalty miss was “justice”.
The Juventus man said: “First of all, I’m not sure that it’s really a foul.
“We’ve seen hundreds of actions like that that aren’t given.
“Of course, when he’s missed, we were happy, it was justice because there was no penalty.”
France went into their title defence without N’Golo Kante, Paul Pogba or Karim Benzema and lost Lucas Hernandez to an ACL injury in their opener against Australia.
They are yet to keep a clean sheet in Qatar – while tomorrow’s opponents Morocco have conceded just once, including a penalty shootout.
That was an own goal against Canada before knocking Spain and Portugal out to become the first African side to reach the semi-finals of a World Cup.
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Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
