World Cup Watch: Dayot Upamecano misses training, is doubtful for France-Morocco clash

In what’s a serious stroke of misfortune and terrible luck for Bayern Munich defender Dayot Upamecano, per new information from L’Equipe, the center back is still suffering from a sore throat and missed training for France ahead of their World Cup semifinals clash against Morocco. As a result, he is considered to be a significant doubt for the massive matchup after starting and playing in all but one of Les Bleus’ World Cup matches, which was the 1-0 loss to Tunisia after they had already secured their advancement to the knockout stages of the tournament.

Of all of the Bayern Munich players for France, Upamecano has been the only one to survive tactical rotations from Didier Deschamps, though the same probably would’ve been said by this point if Lucas Hernandez hadn’t of torn his ACL in the 4-1 win over Australia in their first group stage match. Benjamin Pavard was benched following the win over the Socceroos and Kingsley Coman has only played a substitute’s role in Qatar.

Ever since the win over England last weekend, Upamecano has been experiencing his sore throat, and it wasn’t initially expected to keep him out of the Morocco match, but now that we’re much closer to that and he hasn’t trained, his involvement is in serious jeopardy. It would be a blow for Deschamps and France and he would likely have to turn to either Liverpool’s Ibrahima Konate or Arsenal’s William Saliba to replace Upamecano.

There’s been growing concern as to the respiratory issues that have been floating around various camps in Qatar, and questions have been asked regarding how certain teams have been treating their coronavirus testing protocols. There have not been many players that have yielded positive tests and there’s also growing concern for pundits and fans alike, especially after Grant Wahl’s passing. He had said he was dealing with a case of bronchitis and that the issue certainly wasn’t exclusive to himself, citing that many journalists were suffering from persistent coughs on the last episode of the Futbol with Grant Wahl podcast that he was on before his passing.