Zinedine Zidane was the hero on that night at the Stade de France, with the classy playmaker scoring twice to help France to a 3-0 win over Brazil.
Dider Deschamps was in the France midfield that night, alongside the likes of Emmanuel Petit, Youri Djorkaeff and Christian Karembeu, and it was he who led his country to victory once again in Moscow, beocming only the third person in history to win the tournament both as a player and a manager after Franz Beckenbauer and Mario Zagallo, who managed the 'Selecao' in 1998.
15 July 2018
At the Luzhniki Stadium there was no one performance as dominating as Zidane's 20 years previously, but rather a collection of stars whose collective worth matched up to the sum of their parts.
Despite their wealth of attacking talent, the victory was built on defensive solidity, just as it had been in 1998 when Lilian Thuram, Frank Leboeuf, Marcel Desailly and Bixente Lizarazu formed an imperious-looking backline.
In Moscow, it was Benjamin Pavard, Raphael Varane, Samuel Umtiti and Lucas Hernandez, with the alarming thing for France's rivals being that all are young enough to feature in at least one more World Cup and two more European Championships should they avoid injury.
The victory over Croatia in Sunday's final also provided a certain amount of symmetry, with France having beaten the same side in the semi-finals in 1998 in what was previously Croatia's best-ever tournament finish.
In Stephane Guivarc'h and Olivier Giroud, both sides deployed a physical striker whose main aim was to provide a platform for his more talented team-mates rather than simply goals and while both were criticised at the time, their inclusions were both proven correct as they returned home as world champions.
15 July 2018
The scenes back in Paris on Sunday night promise to be reminiscent of 1998 as France celebrate becoming world champions on foreign soil for the first time in their history.