The three tricks France will use in World Cup final- Deschamps

Didier Deschamps has told his France players they can win the World Cup if they focus on the three Cs — calmness, confidence and concentration.

The French are favourites to beat Croatia at the Luzhniki Stadium in Sunday's final but manager Deschamps is well aware they were also fancied to beat Portugal in the Euro 2016 showpiece, which they lost.

Deschamps revealed he had come up with a variation on the industry model for success – company, customers and competitors – to help his players deal with the pressures of such a big game.

“It’s a huge pleasure and privilege to play in such a match, there’s nothing more beautiful as a professional football player than to play in the World Cup final,” he said.

“We have prepared them as best we can. We must stay calm, we must have confidence and we must concentrate – these are the three words we’ve have been focusing on to get them ready for the final.”

Deschamps believes France are a very different team than the one that lost to Portugal in Paris two years ago, although that inevitably means they lack experience compared to the Croatians.

He added: “The 14 players I have integrated since the Euro final have only learned what playing a big tournament is all about here in Russia, so of course the experience is less but the quality is there.

“Croatia have players with great club experience and their squad has been together for a long time but every team we’ve faced here has been more experienced.”

Still, he said, the nine players who were in the squad at Euro 2016 will have passed on the lessons they learned from the experience of that final – if only how it felt to lose such a big match.

Deschamps, who captained France to victory in their first World Cup final in 1998 could join Brazil’s Mario Zagallo and Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer as the only men to have won the World Cup as both a player and a coach.

Both would be different experiences for him.