Le meltdown: France's players act like brats

[June 21, 2010]  JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- It would be easy to tritely argue that the full-blown insurrection by France's World Cup players shows that the long-admired French spirit of revolution is alive, well and refusing to practice free kicks in a field in South Africa.

But these rebellious Bleus aren't hungry peasants clamoring for morsels of brioche and a modicum of justice, they're multimillionaires blessed with fantasy lives many of their fans would give their left legs for.

And unforgivably, they're acting like spoiled brats.

Refusing to train. Cursing out their coach. Sulking en masse on their team bus, curtains drawn. Having fits in view of television cameras.

"Everyone in the whole world is mocking us now," winger Franck Ribery says. "I'm furious, because we're not playing football anymore."

The shame of it. Forget about medals for services to la Belle France. Monsieur Sarkozy, please make a note: This lot deserve the Legion of Dishonor.

How sad.

The glorious days of 1998 when France fell head over heels in love with its multi-ethnic World Cup-winning team of "Blacks, Blancs, Beurs" -- blacks, whites and Arabs -- feel so far away now.

Twelve years ago, in the footballers' faces flashed up in lights on the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris, France saw itself and loved what it saw. One nation, one people, united behind Zinedine Zidane.

Now, the French are one nation united in disillusion with Les Bleus. One reason why this drawn-out, crockery-hurling divorce with the team has hurt so much for the French is that the love of 1998 felt so good.

Coach Raymond Domenech will get much of the flak for Le Incroyable Meltdown in France's World Cup camp. Rightly so. During his six years in charge of the national team, he has proved to be a poor manager, incapable of building harmony. France's stars grace some of Europe's most successful clubs. But when brought together for national duties under Domenech, they struggle to score and struggle to win. Having failed to hit the net in two matches at this World Cup, they are within a whisker of going home.

But it is not all the coach's fault.

His bosses at the French Football Federation must also shoulder some blame for having faith in Domenech for so long. They should have ditched him after France flunked out of Euro 2008, when he made a fool of himself by proposing marriage to his partner, Estelle Denis, on live television just moments after his side was eliminated.

Domenech was utterly discredited in the eyes of many in France after that. It has been open-season against him, and by extension his players, ever since. Fans and the media in France, joined by 1998 veterans-turned-pundits like retired defender Bixente Lizarazu, have made life insufferable for him and his team, with constant and unrelenting criticism. For months, they have been booed and whistled when they play. They are such easy targets that even Sarkozy's sports minister had a crack at the team ahead of the World Cup, needling it for the lavish accommodations it chose in South Africa.

In short, nothing the players or Domenech do is ever good enough. The squad's biggest crime has been failing to live up to the almost impossibly high standards set by the winners of 1998. Zidane, now retired, has shown up here in South Africa, his presence alone a reminder of everything that the team of 2010 is not. That 1998 veteran Laurent Blanc will take over from Domenech after this World Cup is more proof of the enduring power -- and burden -- of that achievement 12 years ago. Inner city riots in 2005 also blew apart the myth that France bought into in 1998 of a multi-ethnic country living in fraternal and equitable harmony.

So, finally, the team has cracked under the weight of all this history, the expectation, the intense pressures of a World Cup and Domenech's inability to turn the French into winners again.

All that remains now is the morbid fascination of seeing how France will play in its last Group A match against South Africa.

France's players have performed so badly on and off the field at the World Cup that it is anybody's guess what will happen on Tuesday. Maybe they will rouse themselves and try to save some honor. Or perhaps they will just heap more disgrace upon themselves by going out with a sulky whimper.

Either way, the spirit of 1998 is truly dead.

[Associated Press; By JOHN LEICESTER]

John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at [e-mail].

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