Because Ronaldo was among the greatest BIG GAME player ever in history! YET That also confirmed France defense were so great (despite of the FACT Roanldo was HALF FIT in 98 and OVERWEIGHT in 06)
My All Time France XI (Manager: Aime Jacquet) (4-2-3-1) GK: Fabian Barthez RB: Lillian Thuram LB: Bixente Lizarazu CB: Marcel Desailly CB: Robert Jonquet CM: Claude Makelele CM: Didier Deschamps RAM: Raymond Kopa CAM: Michel Platini LAM: Zinedine Zidane ST: Just Fontaine Substitutes: Joel Bats, Maxime Bosis, Manuel Tresor, Jean Tigana, Alain Giresse, Thierry Henry, Jean-Pierre Papin Other Squad Members: Jacques Darui, Manuel Amoros, Laurent Blanc, Patrick Viera, Eric Cantona
I find the greatest difficulty in assembling the all-time France team in the first line of the midfield. I think there are 4 real candidates to 2 places: Claude Makélélé, Didier Deschamps, Patrick Vieira and Jean Tigana and the best of them are Vieira and Tigana but probably weren't the best pair because both of them had similar roles (box-to-box midfielders). My all-time France team would be probably:
The inclusion of Deschamps is fair. He's probably as good a pick as Vieira. I don't think Claude Makelele comes close to the three names you mentioned. He was too one-dimensional for my taste. Other names could be considered ahead of him IMHO : Jean-Jacques Marcel, Armand Penverne, Luis Fernandez.
What is funny between Tigana and Makélélé too is that at one point, both were the right piston at midfield. Maké was at Nantes and for his first cap in '95 against Norway (thus, in a mixed role...and as for the NT, this was his first and last cap for a long time since he could attack for sure but had poor finishing abilities + the competition with other players + the system preferred by Jacquet... Ibrahim Ba was not selected neither, it was Karembeu, more in a role of blocker on that three-men line behind Zidane). And Tigana played much like this at the Euro 84. "Right-piston". A little parenthesis to continue/ add a detail to the comparision. Since your post ended on that. Then, Tigana was not a scorer neither but Makélélé missed that first rendez-vous with the NT in spite of all his efforts, or because of that, in that specific role of "right-piston". In '84, playing that role was less systematic for Tigana (the system being "more flexible") although clearly noticeable and he was playing with different players than Maké. Different context, and different players them two, too. Yes, Tigana was more technical, by a good margin as you said.