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French Fortune
The defending Champions will go into
the twelfth European Championships as certain favourites with the
belief that they can retain the trophy, won four years ago in the
low-countries. The historic French fought a victorious battle, and
Europe was given a valuable lessons in excitement, flair,
determination and its fair to say a good degree of one quality you
can’t buy, bottle or coach - Good fortune!
Disaster
What stark contrast to the disastrous
World Cup campaign of 2002 .The old adage that ‘what comes around
goes around’ was proven to be true, as France took such a fall from
grace- not seen before in World Cup history, having failed to score
in their three games against Senegal, Uruguay and Denmark they
crashed out of the tournament, ignominiously finishing bottom of the
group.
Football quickly passes from history
to folklore and given time events can naturally become distorted,
within just two years this French team has been privy to the
fall-out from the World Cup Finals. Were they worthy Champions in
1998? Was the desire gone? The criticism has not stopped, and the
answers still not found. So where did it all go wrong for the
defending Champions?
The three Musketeers
With goal-scoring defenders among
other unlikely sources France won the World Cup as a team, ‘ all for
one, one for all’ could have been their motto. Four years later
however, it was the loss of the individual, in this case three of
them, the three musketeers in this case being, Robert Pires, Thierry
Henry and Zinedine Zidane.
Firstly the elegant Pires was
unable to make the journey through injury. When the tournament
begun, things started badly and soon got worse, losing the opening
game to Senegal was followed by the dismissal of Henry, and if that
was too much to endure, the incomparable, Zidane missed the opening
two games, again through injury, clearly unfit he returned for the
defeat to Denmark but by then it was too late. The man from
Marseille was sorely missed, not only by the French but football in
general, the writing was on the wall and the holders knew it just
wasn’t meant to be.
In short France
were extremely unlucky. C’est la Vie!
‘Don’t give up’
Footballers know only too well the
fine line between good fortune and bad luck; it’s the difference
between success and failure. Italy will testify to that, for in the
Final of Euro 2000 they bossed the French out of the game, with the
general’s of the Italian midfield stopping all that France could
create and with Thierry Henry and Christophe Dugarry finding few
pickings up front, France must have wondered where a goal or even a
half chance was coming from, so when Italy took the lead and with an
impenetrable defence to overcome, France must have thought the dream
was over.
This French team do not give up
though, and as the injury-time minutes passed, they pushed forward,
more in hope than anything, probing for defensive errors, for
mistakes and not class was going to win this day. From just two
errors that Italy made during the whole game, substitutes Sylvain Wiltord, and David Trezeguet became the goal-scoring heroes of an
unlikely French victory.
You don’t beat this team; they just
run out of time, but not on this occasion!
Best still to come
New coach Jacques Santini has much the
same squad, if anything they will be even better, there’s the odd
concern- Marcel Desailly will be nearly thirty seven and Goalkeeper
Fabian Bartez is currently out of favour with Manchester United,
that aside, Thierry Henry and David Trezeguet should be in their
prime, exciting Auxerre striker Djibril Cisse ready to blossom and
with Claude Makelele and Patrick Vieira firmly established as the
minders to the World’s greatest player, Zinedine Zidane, the
semi-finals would seem the very least of their ambitions.
After the disappointment of the last
World Cup, football needs France to resurrect their slightly
tarnished reputation, and produce some exhilarating football,
reminiscent of Euro 2000, and who knows what may happen with a touch
of luck!
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