French Drip

June 18 – 2008

In 2006, France had a slow start to their World Cup. In-fighting and swollen egos had the team on their heels throughout the first round, and only sheer luck allowed them to pass into the second. Slowly, they started to gel before a fantastic victory over Spain cauterized whatever wounds remained, propelling them into the finals. After the narrowest of losses, France were deserving runners-up.

Today, in 2008, we can comfortably say France have become a steaming pile of shite au poivre.

Excluding a random stretch of ten minutes in their match with Holland, France didn’t once play well at the Euros. At best they looked disorganized – on average they looked frail, bereft of ideas, and technically inept. Come to think of it, they looked like the US National Team.

We could pick through all the issues of age and ego, but it seems to me the blame can be placed at the feet of just two men:

• Raymond Domenech, the French coach, confirmed what an entire nation always suspected – he is mentally off. Astrologist, amateur dramatist and tactical naif, Domenech added absolutely nothing to France’s approach in any of the matches. Not only was there no change in the French approach over the course of the tournament, but there has been none since 2006, a period which saw two losses to Scotland (I use Italics in the hope you will read the word as if you were choking on a Willie Sagnol fart). But that doesn’t even begin to mine the depths of Domenech’s idiocy. How did he respond to the exit from Euro 2008? He proposed to his girlfriend. Immediately after the game. In a live interview. I’m sure that will smooth things over with a disappointed nation.
• Zinedine Zidane, though, owns even greater responsibility for the French disaster. How? He retired. He took his endless bag of tricks, beguiling creativity, and superb technique, and went home. He left a gaping hole in the French midfield, and an even larger one in the French footballing consciousness. At every turn in possession, the French players looked like they were searching out Zizou for a pass. “Where’s that guy we normally give it to before he gives it back to one of us in a way better spot?” they seemed to say. It wasn’t just that they played as though they needed him, they played as if he were still on the field. But he wasn’t. And playing with an imaginary Zidane is considerably worse than playing without one at all.

And so France must start over from scratch as a footballing nation. They will fire Domenech in a matter of weeks and then, if they’re smart, they won’t begin searching for the next Zidane. There won’t be one, and France will need to come to terms with that if they are to win a major competition in the next decade.