Au Revoir: the French Chaos Transcends Catastrophe

By Darshan Joshi

We have already exposed the whirlpools of infighting that have, especially in the past week, engulfed the French national side in South Africa. If you haven’t yet familiarised yourselves with what did happen, this piece of news is going to astonish you. In a nutshell, though, here is what has already happened:

- Raymond Domenech is utterly mad

- Legends like Zinedine Zidane, Just Fontaine and Bixente Lizarazu have castigated the national team, and coach

- William Gallas is jealous that Patrice Evra got chosen as captain ahead of him

- Florent Malouda was inexplicably left out of the opening match against Uruguay, and that didn’t sit well with the players, or Malouda himself

- Sidney Govou was picked for both matches, despite not being at full form. Apparently, none of the players support the idea of him playing regularly

- Yoann Gourcuff is unpopular amongst the rest of the camp, and it was a few senior players who called for him to be axed from the starting eleven for the match with Mexico. They got their wish

- Players are unhappy that Thierry Henry has been starting on the bench

That was the mighty list of problems France faced. However, the couple of days that have followed the defeat to Mexico has seen problems escalate to a level beyond understandable reckoning.

It was leaked to the media that during the half-time interval of their fixture against Mexico that Nicolas Anelka was substituted off because of something he said to Raymond Domenech. It has since been revealed that Anelka told Domenech to “F*ck off, you dirty son of a w**re” and was so replaced by Andre-Pierre Gignac. The following day, the announcement was made that Nicolas Anelka would be sent home following the altercation with Domenech.