In 1998 a filmmaker spent five weeks so close to the France squad that they forgot he existed. These are those photographs.

This one came into the house last week via a young filmmaker from Lens. It stopped everything. With the World Cup final in plain sight, the timing felt right to surface it properly today. 

Stéphane Meunier was a French filmmaker who in 1998 pitched an idea to Canal+, who held the broadcast rights for the tournament: let him follow the France national team throughout the entire World Cup and document what he found.

The access he was granted was unprecedented. Five weeks inside the camp, present for training sessions, team meals, quiet moments in hotel rooms, bus journeys, even the dressing room after matches. Over time the players stopped registering his presence entirely, which was precisely when the most interesting photographs began.

Alongside his documentary work, Meunier kept an Olympus in his pocket throughout. He shot instinctively and without flash, preserving the naturalness of every moment. Zinedine Zidane recovering in his room the day before a match. Fabien Barthez reading a comic book in bed. Players stretched out across hotel corridors. Didier Deschamps in conversation.

These aren't photographs taken with any particular brief in mind. They're what happens when a camera is always in the room and nobody is performing for it anymore.

The documentary itself, Les Yeux Dans Les Bleus, was released just two days after France beat Brazil 3-0 in the final at the Stade de France, on Bastille Day of all days. It became a cultural phenomenon almost immediately, a portrait of a team and a country experiencing something together that neither had ever felt before.

President Chirac walked into the dressing room after the final and Meunier caught him on the Olympus, a head of state in among sweaty, euphoric players with a gold trophy in the room.

The photographs are something separate from the documentary. More accidental and honest. Moments that were never planned and never posed, which is precisely what gives them their value twenty eight years later.

Tonight, Spain and Argentina meet at MetLife Stadium in a final that will produce its own archive. Somewhere in that building there will be a camera in someone's pocket catching the things nobody planned. 

The house will be watching. Espresso freshly made.

Shot of the good stuff.