Shameful French Take a Page Out of the Dutch Book

By Darshan Joshi, writing from Australia

If you know what a ‘Dutch Book’ is, in it’s economic (as well as gambling) translation, then you’d realise that this is not what this is about. It is more of a literal ‘taking a page out of their book’ rather than a witty, schizophrenic banderole. Clearly, in the world of football (to evade some form of racial outrage), it has been established worldwide that all but the French hate the French; a remark that the Irish perpetuated by suffering from a touch of Henry handiwork. But it turns out even that statement may be as off-target as the French national side have been in the past week.

Zinedine Zidane has just come out with the understatement of the World Cup, but we’ll listen to him in awe and reverence anyway. After all, this eye-opener is coming from the same head that headbutted Marco Materazzi, and handed the Jules Rimet trophy to the Azzurri all those years ago. Zidane has said:

The hardest thing is that there is no teamwork. They didn’t play together and it was more a case of individual efforts… He’s not a coach, he’s a selector (in reference to Raymond Domenech)

We’ll get to the selector in a moment, but for once it isn’t just he who is at fault for the goings-on (or should I say, ‘goings-off’…) in the French side this summer.