Not so long ago Clairefontaine, the peaceful chateau that is home to the French national team, resembled a sanctuary for its residents.
When Zinedine Zidane once endured a desperate season with his club side Juventus, the moment he turned up at Clairefontaine he felt serene. His troubles melted. His shoulders were lighter. ”It’s a place that has a special place in my head,” he said.
”Negative thoughts went away and I felt happy to be back among the France team.”
Today France’s number 10 is Karim Benzema, a gifted player with Algerian roots who recently became part of the nouveau galactico movement at Real Madrid. Echoes of Zidane? Not where Clairefontaine is concerned.
This week Benzema joined the national team with more than a little frostiness in the air. The 21-year-old did something foolish recently, confessing that he does not try his hardest in a France shirt and didn’t really feel like playing in their last World Cup qualification match in Serbia.
Naturally, outraged public opinion lurched so rapidly away from him that the coach, Raymond Domenech, might even have earned some rare popularity points had he ejected Benzema from the squad. For once Domenech perhaps deserved some sympathy because he was in a lose-lose situation. Pick Benzema and be accused of weakness. Discard him and be accused of megalomaniac decisions to spite the team.
It has been that kind of campaign: splintered, stuttering, pressured.
A complex atmosphere off the field has been reflected in self-conscious performances on it. In their qualification group France have managed to lose 3-1 to Austria, draw twice with Romania and could manage only meek 1-0 scorelines against Lithuania and in the Faroe Islands. They have one of the worst goal-scoring records of all the European hopefuls.
Arsène Wenger, whose club supplies more members to the squad than any other, struggles to comprehend why France are so inhibited. ”When you look at the players offensively it is unbelievable,” he said. ”We have Benzema, who plays at Real Madrid, Henry plays at Barcelona, Anelka plays at Chelsea, Ribery plays at Bayern Munich, Gourcuff is the playmaker for Bordeaux. How is it possible this team doesn’t score more goals?”
For many the answer is simple. In one word — Domenech. To sum it up, when France played the Faroe Islands, Domenech sent them out with two defensive midfielders sitting in front of the back four. Such gratuitous caution sent French supporters up the wall.
Wenger and Domenech have never had much of a rapport, partly because the France coach dislikes coming to England to watch his Premier League players. He famously shares his wife’s passion for poker and would rather be putting his mind to games other than football on a Saturday night. Poker is a serious endeavour. ”I want to tackle the World Championship in Las Vegas,” he has said.
”My job helped me to learn the analysis capacity of an opponent. As in football, one glance is enough, a sensation.”
As in poker, in management he has a penchant for making people wonder what on earth he is thinking. But Wenger believes France’s situation is so delicate, all must put aside their differences. ”We all have to stand behind the coach because we want France to go to the World Cup. It would be a disaster not to go.”
Wenger is under no illusions that the path to South Africa hinges on the play-offs. Serbia are hot favourites to win the group and it is unlikely France can be caught for second place. ”The real question mark now is who we will meet in the play-off,” he said.
This makes the next two matches, against Faroe Islands and Austria at home, interesting in terms of whether France are on the upward trend they hinted at with their last display, a 1-1 draw in Belgrade. And that is the crux of their predicament: there is a short-term issue — getting to next summer’s finals — and a longer-term one, which is about the health of the team under Domenech.
Gerard Houllier, France’s technical director, has spoken about the need for a new ”culture bleue”, reminiscent of the successful teams of the past.
”The strongest teams are those with the strongest mentality, but lately we have had a bit of a shortage of mental strength,” he said.
The Benzema situation exemplifies why Houllier thinks it is an increasingly difficult thing to rectify. What he calls the ”zapping generation”, those nurtured on technology, are trickier customers. ”Their concentration isn’t the same and they have different interests,” he said.
”Benzema talked complete rubbish, but we have to be forgiving.”
With creators Yoann Gourcuff, Franck Ribery and Samir Nasri all unavailable through injury, and Thierry Henry recovering from a knock, Benzema has to be indulged. On this occasion Domenech was forced to play his hand. The poker player was all too easy to read. —