Will Didier Deschamps, so often overlooked in discussion about the game's great coaches, have the last laugh again in the FIFA World Cup final?

• Didier Deschamps is one win away from a historic second straight title
• The France coach is still not a universally lauded figure in his homeland
• Players, former pros and fellow coaches see him among the world’s best

As captain, he led France to their first world title. As coach, he guided them to a second. In between times, he steered Monaco to the first UEFA Champions League final of their history and Marseille to their only Ligue 1 triumph in three decades.

Casual observers might imagine, from this CV alone, that Didier Deschamps was beloved in France and feted far beyond its borders even before leading Les Bleus to yet another FIFA World Cup™ final here in Qatar. Yet when Morocco coach Walid Regragui described his France counterpart earlier this week as “the best in the world”, eyebrows – even now – were raised.

Deschamps, in truth, rarely figures in discussions and debates about the game’s foremost coaching minds. And while another world title would surely silence his remaining critics, he has remained a strangely divisive figure in his homeland.

Not that the man himself cares. As player and coach, on the field and off it, Deschamps has never sought the spotlight or been swayed by the pursuit of external approval.

Allowing his achievements to speak for him has always been the 54-year-old’s favoured approach. When Eric Cantona famously sneered that his former international team-mate would “never be anything more than a water carrier”, adding "you can find players like him on every street corner”, Descamps had the perfect response. "How many players can you find on street corners,” he replied, “who have won two European Cups?”

A similar riposte can now be offered to those who underestimate him as a coach in the same way Cantona misjudged him as a player. To Dechamps’ critics - and, yes some do still exist - he’s an arch-pragmatist who should be producing more attractive football with the players at his disposal.

When Les Bleus qualified for the last World Cup final, one prominent French commentator went as far as to say the team would be “the ugliest world champions in history”. Plenty of others wanted him replaced by Zinedine Zidane regardless of the outcome.

Though unruffled by such criticism, Deschamps could easily point to the fact that his line-up is anything but defensive. The redeployment of Antoine Griezmann behind a front three with few, if any, defensive responsibilities has proved to be the tactical masterstroke of the tournament, and is typical of the innovative solutions he has found to solve massive injury problems.

Deschamps is now just one match away from making fresh history as the first man since Vittorio Pozzo, mastermind of Italy’s 1934 and ’38 successes, to win back-to-back World Cups. Yet even with this momentous achievement beckoning, France’s coach has zero interest in taking centre stage.

“I’m not the most important thing here - it’s the team,” he said after this record was raised following France’s hard-fought semi-final win over Morocco. “Of course I’m proud and we all know that we now have the chance to defend our title in the final. That’s quite an achievement. But I don’t really think about myself. I’m just happy about the fact that we had this success.”

Given this humility, it has been left to others – current and former players in the main – to laud France’s largely unsung coaching hero. Jules Kounde told FIFA of a man who “does everything to make the players feel comfortable”, while Raphael Varane praised Deschamps’ ability to “use everyone's qualities for a collective goal”.

“His best quality is his ability to build a squad,” was how Patrice Evra, the former France defender, summed it up this week. “Sometimes he doesn’t pick the best players because his motivation is: ‘The team is the star’. He’s someone who can build a squad to win a tournament. He’s just a great coach and he’s so humble.

“For me,” added Evra, “he’s by far the greatest French coach.”

If his side can beat Argentina on Sunday, Deschamps may just find that France and the wider world will finally, belatedly, even if grudgingly, agree with Evra’s assertion.