Paul Fennessy IN THE LAST decade, no country has been more consistent in international football than France .
At the Euros this summer, many critics have tipped France to triumph again, citing how reliably they have tended to perform with Deschamps at the helm. Without the context of who was saying them, you might think those words were said about the Irish team or several other international sides. For a long time, the French team were considered underachievers on the international stage and this issue still applies at club level.
Other factors include “the late onset of urbanisation in the country” and “high tax rates,” which meant Ligue 1 clubs could not offer salaries comparable to other leading footballing nations in Europe. Consequently, the Bosman ruling led to an exodus of top French footballing talents who knew they would earn better wages elsewhere.
Advertisement In the next five World Cups after 1958, France did not qualify for three and failed to escape the group stages in the other two. Yet as fondly remembered as that team are for their technical prowess and the genius of Platini — who, along with Zinedine Zidane, is widely considered the nation’s greatest-ever player — they only won one trophy.
Everything changed when Aimé Jacquet was appointed manager after the disastrous ’94 World Cup qualifying campaign. Jacquet travelled to Manchester in January 1996 and offered Cantona the chance to fill the only vacant role left in the team at centre forward, but this opportunity was declined. “The great Rennes team of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Michel Hidalgo’s France team in the early ’80s — all teams that played with a certain dash, flair and swagger. But come the early 90s, the team that succeeded the France team in the 1980s hadn’t lived up to expectations.
“It’s not about being crowd-pleasing, entertaining and playing swashbuckling football. It’s about winning football matches, being defensively solid, and lucid in the pivotal moments in matches and tournaments. And that’s the mentality that finally gets France over the line in the 1998 World Cup.”He continues: “It was a reaction against the false dawn of the late ’80s, early ’90s.
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