Herewith an update to my earlier post about Nicolas Anelka’s obscenity-driven verbal assault of coach Raymond Domenech Friday night. It now serves as a perfect reflection of the incompetence and hypocrisy of the entire French Football Federation responsible France’s South African debacle on and off the pitch.
France
Player Gives Domenech A Piece of France’s Mind
Now we know what it took for French coach Raymond Domenech to—finally—pull the utterly useless attacker Nicolas Anelka off the pitch in the hopes someone else might create something remotely resembling an offensive presence: Anelka lavishly insulting the previously adoring Domenech in front of the entire squad.
That Giant Sucking Sound
Isn’t just France, but Raymond “I am not an idiot” Domenech drawing in his last, horrid breath as French coach. Just a few comments:
Peyton Place-sur-Seine
French coach Raymond Domenech may have decided to put the team’s best interests ahead of his many, many personal grudges for once, but that still doesn’t mean sanity has returned to France’s footballing soap opera. Though virtually all press reports in France Thursday say Domenech is set to make what has long been an obvious right …
Vuvuzela: Call It This Cup’s Atmospherics
France Sabotaged, Again, By Its Coach
There’s something quite obviously perverse about the French football authorities. Mindful of the fact that pretty much all of the nation’s football fans — and more importantly, pretty much all of its football players — believe (with very good reason) that coach Raymond Domenech is an incorrigible idiot, they have finally agreed to …
The Silence of William Gallas
So it turns out that France defender Gallas has decided not to talk to the press “for the duration of the tournament”, as a team official put it. Goalkeeper Hugo Lloris added ominously (if helpfully), “Whatever happens in our squad stays in our squad.” Rumor has it that Gallas is angry that France have made Patrice Evra the captain, …
France’s World Cup: “Can We Go Home Now?”
Don’t tell the French this World Cup isn’t all over for them before it even starts. Suggesting otherwise is largely brushed off on Planet France–the largest consuming nation of tranquilizers and anti-depressants anywhere. Right now, optimism is mostly seen as merely forestalling the soccer agony that fate has in store for l’equipe de …
Oh, Henry!
Okay, so forget about the Thierry Henry who became the worst cheater the world had ever seen by controlling a ball with his hand that set up France’s undeserved victory over Ireland—and the World Cup berth that came with it. For much of the decade before that, Henry had been famous as an icon of French footballing excellence; a …
