Anthony Martial had just registered his first two-goal match in top-flight football. A significant landmark for a young striker.
But as he left the field after Monaco’s 3-0 win over Bastia at the weekend, he immediately turned his mind to the next challenge, against Arsenal for a place in the last eight of the Uefa Champions League.
“We need to be serious, concentrated, and not be rushed into anything,” Martial, 19, said of the second leg of a tie in which his team hold a 3-1 advantage from the away leg. “There’s an extra motivation, too, to show the level of French clubs is high.”
France’s Ligue 1, often considered the straggler of Europe’s so-called Big Five domestic competitions – England, Spain, Germany and Italy are the lords of that high table – is poised on the edge of an unprecedented coup.
Should Monaco join Paris Saint-Germain in the quarter-finals of club football’s leading tournament by the end of Tuesday night, France will not only have a high proportion of the remaining contenders for the European Cup, but it will have flexed its muscles sturdily in the face of the super-rich Premier League.
PSG were second favourites before they knocked out Chelsea last week; Arsenal were expected to progress past Monaco without much trouble.
Expatriate wealth has benefited both PSG and Monaco in the past four years, with heavy investment from Qatar (PSG) and a rush of finance from a Russian billionaire, Dimitry Rybolovlev (Monaco).
Those backers chose Ligue 1 clubs as projects for distinct reasons, but they both knew enough of French football to know that it usually has an abundance of native talent, and that the sport is about to experience a boost to its popularity in the country, at Euro 2016.
France will host that tournament, beginning on June 10 next year. That is just 53 weeks after the 2015 Champions League final takes place in Berlin, and if there is not a Ligue 1 club involved in that final, it is fairly sound to think that a Frenchman will play in it, someone for the national coach Didier Deschamps to watch, assess and appreciate.
Some of his key decisions over the next year will be about how much to rely on youth.
Even the teenager Martial is on his radar, as are several young Monaco footballers for whom the Champions League, and particularly the ambushing of Arsenal in London, has acted as a showcase.
Seven players under the age of 23 appeared for Monaco that night, several of them French.
Geoffrey Kondogbia, the powerful central midfielder, earned great praise for his display. He scored the opening goal against Arsenal, a spectacular long-range drive.
Kondogbia, an anchor midfielder, scores rarely, although he has a knack for netting important strikes. He scored twice for France on their way to winning the 2013 Under 20 World Cup in Turkey.
That tournament gave Deschamps plenty of optimistic pointers for Euro 2016, and reminded scouts from Europe’s bigger clubs that France finds itself with a golden generation of players as frequently as any nation.
Scan the cast list of the Champions League’s later stages and there are “Bleuets” – junior aspirants to a long-term place among “Les Bleus” – in key roles at a majority of the contenders.
During the first leg of Arsenal versus Monaco last week, Kondogbia certainly triumphed in the all-French contest for mastering central midfield against his compatriot, Francis Coquelin, 23, although has had a generally good season in the Premier League.
Meanwhile, at Juventus, who play Borussia Dortmund on Wednesday, the France international Paul Pogba, 22, is rapidly becoming the Serie A champions’ most valuable footballer.
A midfielder who tackles, passes and scores, Pogba can barely turn up for work without hearing rumours of a new offer being prepared to try to tempt Juve to sell him to PSG, or to Real Madrid, or to Chelsea.
The progress of Kingsley Coman, 18, at Juve this season also has been startling.
Atletico Madrid, looking to overturn a 1-0 deficit against Bayer Leverkusen, will look to the speed and energy of Antoine Griezmann. He is 23, and went to the 2014 World Cup with France, impressing there.
In Brazil, Real Madrid’s central defender Rafael Varane also caught the eye, named on the shortlist of the best young player at the tournament. He had recently turned 20.
Over the next 14 months Varane, who has had a challenging season with Madrid, has the potential to find a regular place at a club where Sergio Ramos and Pepe command the central defence.
Chelsea’s Kurt Zouma, 20, can build on the good impressions he has made on Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho. It is not fanciful to imagine Zouma and Varane together, young but wise, as centre backs for France next June.
Each is making a case to be picked ahead of Eliaquim Mangala, the 24-year-old defender who has had a mixed start to his career at Manchester City since joining the English champions from Porto for over €30 million (Dh116m) last summer.
In France’s last outing, in November, Deschamps shared the left-back position between Lucas Digne, 21, of PSG and Layvin Kurzawa, 22, of Monaco.
Against Arsenal, Kurzawa, like Martial and Kondogbia, will want to press further his credentials as a man with the temperament for big international tests.
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