France coach Didier Deschamps gave full credit to his young squad for winning the World Cup with Sunday's 4-2 victory over Croatia.
At an average age of 26 years and one month, France were the second-youngest squad to compete in Russia after only Nigeria, and were led by a teenager in 19-year-old Kylian Mbappe, who was named Best Young Player of the tournament after scoring four goals.
"How marvellous! It's a young team, who are on the top of the world," Deschamps said. "Some are champions at the age of 19.
"We did not play a huge game but we showed mental quality. And we scored four goals anyway. They deserved to win. The group worked so hard and we had some tough moments along the way. It hurt so much to lose the Euro two years ago, but it made us learn too."
Fourteen of France's 23 players were World Cup newcomers but Deschamps said they were ready to work towards a common goal and were mentally more mature than their age.
"Talent is not sufficient. You need the psychological and mental aspects. Any team is then able to climb mountains," Deschamps said. "Sometimes I can be hard very hard with them but I do it for them and even though they are young they usually do listen."
The manager singled out Mbappe and Antoine Griezmann, the final's man of the match for leading the group.
"The collective is always important but there are individual players who have made the difference," he said. "Those 23 players will now be linked forever whatever happens. They will go different paths but will forever be linked together and from today nothing will be the same professionally because they are world champions."
Deschamps became just the third person to win the World Cup as a player and manager with Brazil's Mario Zagallo and German Franz Beckenbauer, after captaining France to the World Cup on home soil, but he deferred the honour to his players after the game.
"The win is not about me, it's the players who won the game. For 55 days, we have done a lot of work. It is the supreme coronation. We are proud to be French, to be Blues. The victory in the match belongs to them. Vive le Republic!"
The coach also said France managed to overcome mistakes and imperfections with sheer mental strength to lift the trophy for the second time.
"My greatest source of pride is they had they right state of mind," Deschamps told reporters. "Today there were imperfections, we did not do everything right but we had those mental and psychological qualities which were decisive for this World Cup."
The 49-year-old coach, who also led France to the Euro 2016 final only to lose in Paris to Portugal, said that defeat may have been key to winning the World Cup.
"Maybe if we were Euro champions we would not have been world champions today. I learned a lot from that defeat," he said. "The Euro final was different. We tried to stay relaxed this time and the players knew what they had to do and what was at stake.