Kylian Mbappe was the talk of the town again as Olivier Giroud called him 'scary' and Guy Stephan, France's assistant manager, had an even more colourful choice of words.
There was no sign of the world's best player at Al Sadd, France's training base, though, but this was not a development to get English hearts beating a little quicker in anticipation that he might be absent from Saturday's quarter-final showdown.
Mbappe didn't take part in a session that was open to the media, as he was doing second day recovery. Giroud, the record-breaking scorer, and Hugo Lloris, the soon-to-be appearance record-breaker, also finished early, as head coach Didier Deschamps manages the load of his squad.
France are bidding to become the first nation to successfully defend the World Cup since Brazil in 1962 and Giroud said he and his team-mates were 'serene, composed and concentrating' on England rather than writing another page in the history books.
Those three words did not describe the France dressing room at half-time on Sunday, however, as Giroud explained it needed a rallying call from Manchester United defender Raphael Varane to focus minds on the way they had been playing against Poland.
'Varane had some strong words,' said the AC Milan striker. 'He had told us that we had lifted our foot from the pedal and that couldn't continue. He told us that we must keep fighting and we had to transmit that with our body language.
'Rafa told us that it was the time to fight and that if we didn't fight there would be no tomorrow. We know we are going to face a strong England team. We don't think about history because we want to play three more games. We focus on England in the quarter-final first.'
Giroud had scored his 52nd goal for France just before the interval but they were certainly a different team in the second period with Mbappe moving through the gears, scoring twice to take his tally over two World Cups to nine.
There seems little doubt he will better whatever figure Giroud sets at some point – 'Kylian is the best forward I have played with,' he purred. 'It is scary because he is still improving.' – and it is a sign of the 36-year-old's character that he is actively willing him to do it one day.
'How long the record will last I don't know,' said Stephan. 'But it's fantastic for Olivier to have arrived at that level. It's in about the same number of caps as Thierry Henry. I know there is a much younger player who has already scored 33 goals and who is breaking all the records.
Kylian has already scored 9 goals at World Cups. Other great footballers like Messi and Ronaldo haven't scored that many at his age. He's on a very high trajectory. He's a player who is out of the ordinary, he's very creative, very imaginative on the pitch.
'He likes to wander, he has explosivity; he has a great shot, he has a lot of assets and he shows them in every match. With Kylian Mbappe, we have an off the planet player.'
