4 Big names excluded from France's UEFA Nations League squad | October 2018

The reigning World Cup winners have announced their squad for the upcoming UEFA Nations League clash against 2014 World Cup winners Germany and the Netherlands.

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The French are unbeaten since the World Cup

Didier Deschamps has announced a strong squad with almost all of them being part of the World Cup winning team. Samuel Umtiti, Benjamin Mendy, Nabil Fekir, Corentin Tolisso and Adil Rami are injured while Tanguay Ndombele gets his international call-up. Karim Benzema would've been an obvious inclusion in the list if not for the injury that has sidelined the Real Madrid forward for a couple of weeks.

The French are unbeaten since winning the World Cup, drawing their first encounter with the Germans and beating the Netherlands in their next match. Below are four notable players who didn't make the list.

Aymeric Laporte

The central defender has started all the matches for Manchester City this season

The Manchester City centre-back has been in fine form this season with 11 starts and has a goal to his credit already. The former Athletico Bilbao defender has been a revelation this season with the Manchester City backline keeping 5 clean sheets and have only conceded 3 goals so far.

The passing from the Laporte has been exquisite, making a total of 742 passes with an average of more than 92 passes per game. The sheer range of the defenders passing has also been another improvement this season with sweeping 50-yard balls across to the forward line and boldly squeezing in passes in tight situations.

With the French duo of Samuel Umtiti and Adil Rami injured Aymeric Laporte, being in imperious form should have been a sure call-up to the French side except that lesser impressive Kurt Zouma and Mamadou Sakho were called up instead of the 24-year-old.

Anthony Martial

Anthony Martial has finally started to get back to the form that made him a feared winger

Probably the least deserving player to be on the team list, Anthony Martial has been far from his best for the past couple of years, being a mere shadow of himself compared to the year the young Frenchmen took Old Trafford by storm.

The 22-year-old winger has so far made just 7 appearances for the Red Devils with 3 of them being from the bench, But the last few matches have seen the winger slowly gaining confidence and showing glimpses of his previous menacing form.

The former Monaco man so far has scored 2 goals in his outings with a goal each in the UEFA Champions League and the Premier League.

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