Thierry Henry: Genius, pundit and bad loser

By Luke McLaughlin

Thierry Henry has enjoyed a flood of positive press lately: Sky Sports cranked the hype up to 11 as he began his punditry career a few weeks ago, and a full-blown Henry love-in ensued.

Sports correspondents everywhere were queuing up to praise the Frenchman’s playing prowess. It was widely agreed he would bring the same combination of flair and insouciance to the Sky Sports football studio.

Gary Neville (who we’re told has single-handedly revolutionised the business of football punditry) is all well and good, but the thinking is that Henry will be the Serge Gainsbourg to Neville’s Dire Straits. The Émile Zola to his Jeffrey Archer. The Thierry Henry to his Gary Neville.

Reportedly paying Henry £4million a year, Sky are entitled to expect something half-decent; in comparison Neville has to scrape by on £1.2million. Henry should prove a sound investment. But is he really such an all-round dreamboat?

One particular night sticks in my mind from Henry’s career, an occasion when he got it wrong on and off the pitch. And I don’t mean the World Cup play-off handball against Ireland in 2009.

I’m thinking of the 2006 Champions League final, when Henry captained Arsenal against Frank Rijkaard’s Barcelona in Paris: Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto’o, et al.

Perhaps you remember how the game went: Jens Lehmann was sent off, Sol Campbell scored for Arsenal, who heroically resisted until two late goals – from Eto’o and Juliano Belletti – shattered their dreams.

Henry had crossed brilliantly for Campbell to score. But he missed two one-on-one chances that were, by his own high standards, pretty straightforward.

A superb first touch fashioned the first chance after just three minutes, but Henry’s shot was poor and Victor Valdés saved. In the second half, Alexander Hleb (remember him?) sent Henry clear, but again he shot tamely at Valdés. These were huge moments in a huge match.

Sitting up in the stand, I thought Henry’s attitude and body language were incredibly negative, even when Arsenal were ahead. He seemed to withdraw into himself, to shrink away. He didn’t look interested in trying to lift his team.

At one point in the second half, before taking a corner, Henry bowed his head and crouched down from sheer exhaustion. I’d never seen a player do that before, no matter how tired. Certainly not a captain in a European final.

With better finishing from Henry Arsenal would have been champions of Europe. The Arsène Wenger era would have been fundamentally changed for the better. For a striker of Henry’s ability, missing two clear chances in a European final was a disaster.

Clearly angry (with himself?), Henry was interviewed by his future employers after the match. Surely time to congratulate Barcelona? But there were no Gallic shrugs or Renault-Clio-advert grins here.
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“I don’t want to start any argument … but I don’t know if the referee had a Barcelona shirt on or something,” he ranted. “If they don’t want us to win it, just say it right from the start.

“I’m just saying that some calls in the game were a bit strange. Next time I’m going to learn how to dive maybe. They kicked me in my knee, my ankles, but I’m not a woman so I stay on my feet. I expect the ref to do his job but I don’t think he did.

“All the time you talk about Ronaldinho and everything but I didn’t see him today. I saw Henrik Larsson [who created both Barça goals]… I didn’t see no Ronaldinho and I didn’t see no Eto’o.”

In the space of 60 seconds Henry had attacked the referee, several opponents, UEFA, and the entire female population of the planet. It was astonishingly sexist, not to mention forgetful in view of Eto’o’s equaliser.

It’s one of the most graceless post-match interviews ever conducted. Incredibly Henry escaped a UEFA charge despite suggesting an official conspiracy for Barcelona to win. He also largely escaped criticism not just for his appalling attitude but his performance, which was indifferent at best.

Henry had been linked with Barcelona but soon decided to stay with Arsenal (not surprising – he’d just slagged off half their team – although he did make the move in 2007).

Henry was an incredible player but if you want to be really harsh (I’ve started so I’ll finish), you could argue blaming external forces for his own failings was something of a theme in his career.

When Chelsea won the first league title of the Jose Mourinho era in 2005, Manchester United captain Roy Keane’s assessment was simple: they hadn’t been good enough.

Henry’s verdict was also simple: Arsenal had failed to strengthen the squad in order to compete with Chelsea. Whoever’s fault it may have been, it wasn’t his.

Great players are defined by great performances in the most important matches. Henry was a wonderful, revolutionary talent who got it right a lot more than he got it wrong. But that night at Stade de France, he came up well short.

Alexandre the Great

Ligue 1 this season has mostly been about its two most self-important teams, Marseille and PSG.

Marseille’s transformation from a failing big club with a chip on its shoulder (think this season’s Liverpool) to a thrilling big club with a chip on its shoulder (think last season’s Liverpool) has given Ligue 1 fresh impetus.

It has challenged the complacent thought that the 2014/15 campaign was merely meant to be a procession for the sporting wing of the Qatari government.

While Marseille top Ligue 1,PSG have started the season in somnambulant, Andre Schurrle jeez-do-I-really-have-to-play-football-again type form.

Even so, they are second in the league and unbeaten – six wins, six draws – and on Sunday they play Marseille, ensuring that for the next few days at least it’s all going to be about these two teams.

But the season’s narrative might be changing and that is largely down to one man, Alexandre Lacazette.
The Lyon striker has been in magnificent form.

Lacazette has scored 10 goals so far this season, the latest two earning Lyon a 3-1 victory at Nice, the first probably being the best of the pair.

He is Ligue 1’s joint top scorer, along with Marseille’s Big Unit Andre-Pierre Gignac.

But where Gignac is muscle, bustle, toil and grit, Lacazette is more like a second Anelka, speed, grace, technique and crucially, no sulk.

Across Europe’s big leagues, only Cristiano Ronaldo – whose main two footballing moves at the moment are to shoot, then look at the stadium’s giant screen to see himself shoot – has scored more goals this season.

For lovers of these things, Lacazette has also been credited with four assists and fashioned 23 chances this season.

His goals have helped drag Lyon into 3rd place, a point behind PSG and five back from Marcelo Bielsa’s Marseille. Seeing as they started the season with 5 defeats in their first seven games, that is some achievement.

The 23-year-old is already two-thirds of the way to matching the 15 goals he scored last season when he played upfront with now-Swansea seat warmer, Bafetimbi Gomis (goals shown here along with Europop backing track).

This season Lacazette, a product of Lyon’s superb academy, has been handed the striking duties to himself and excelled.

He has been helped along in his efforts by a midfield including possibly the single-most talented player in France, Yoann Gourcuff, whose inconsistency means he is called “mercurial” at least 20 times a season and Steed Malbranque who, for some reason, is not yet 35.

Lacazette is so good, it is a surprise that literally nobody in France is comparing him to Harry Kane.
Such form has naturally seen Lacazette linked to a “big-money move” to the Premier League.

Quite refreshingly though, Lacazette has said it his “responsibility” to remain at Lyon, a club he first played for at under-18 level.

It is certainly a surprise though that he has not made a bigger impression at international level.
Something seems to be holding him back and that something might be bad timing. Or Didier Deschamps.

Lacazette was close but did not make the French squad for the Brazil World Cup, an omission that certainly made less sense than that of Samir Nasri’s.

He is unlucky that another former Lyon youth product, Karim Benzema, holds the main strike spot and he is backed by hamstring-tweaker Loic Remy and Olivier Giroud.

On the wings are possibly France’s most consistent player Mathieu Valbuena and next big thing Antoine Griezmann.

All of which leaves little room for an unlucky Lacazette, especially as it seems the French coach seems unconvinced by his talents.

Deschamps has however called Lacazette into his squad for the two friendlies (France are hosting Euro 2016 so are not playing competitive group games) later this month against everyone’s second favourite team Serbia and Spain.

Lacazette is largely there not only because of his good form but because the coiffured-Giroud, like much of the rest of Arsenal, is injured.

Deschamps is also a manager who does not like change.

He returned from an OK World Cup (France got to quarter finals but promptly lost to the only decent side they played, Germany) and decided against making any great changes.

He lost charmless Franck Ribery and Eric Abidal through retirement and has not seen fit yet to make more changes.

One thing Lacazette does have on his side though is time. He is one of nine players in the current French squad aged under 25 and has two years to convince Deschamps of his true worth.

That could start as early this week. On Sunday Lyon play Guingamp, who have conceded 21 goals already this season, the second highest amount in Ligue 1.

When Zidane played “Poofterball”

Thirteen years ago, Luke McLaughlin, Paris Shilton’s “Australia Correspondent”, got to see first-hand how good Zinedine Zidane was, how nasty Kevin Muscat could be and Patrick Vieira shopping. The memory has stayed with him.

By Luke McLaughlin

“When we don’t know what to do, we just give the ball to Zizou and he works something out.” – Bixente Lizarazu

In November 2001, France’s team travelled across the world to Melbourne to play a ‘friendly’ against Australia.

It was a long way to go for an apparently meaningless game but Australia needed the practice: they were preparing to face Uruguay in a two-legged World Cup qualification play-off.

The match was controversial. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger led the loud complaints from assorted European clubs, who would see their France internationals fly 20,000 miles or so for a kick-around on an Australian cricket pitch.

It did seem faintly ridiculous for the World and European Champions, some of the world’s best (and best-paid) footballers, flying so far during the domestic season for a one-off friendly against Australia at the MCG. Nevertheless France touched down in Melbourne with an almost full-strength squad.

I was working in Melbourne during a clichéd gap year and my office was a matter of yards from France’s team hotel. I bumped into Patrick Vieira and Nicolas Anelka one morning. They were strolling along Collins Street in team-issue blue tracksuits and white trainers, attracting remarkably little attention.

Melbourne is a footie-mad city but footie is AFL.

European stars of a game regrettably described by a small minority of natives as ‘Poofterball’ (never to Vieira’s face) were not widely recognised.

I got Vieira’s autograph for my Arsenal-supporting Aussie mate. Anelka was shy but Vieira was relaxed, friendly, and the most physically imposing man I have ever met. He told me they were going shopping.

Two days later and the Melbourne Cricket Ground is sold out. France are the World and European Champions and have the world’s most expensive player, Zinedene Zidane.

Four months previously Zidane’s £45.8m transfer from Juventus to Real Madrid broke the transfer world record. “We must have the best players in the world,” Florentino Perez insisted. Was it really that simple? Zidane’s status as a ‘non-practising Muslim’ opened up lucrative TV markets for the club.
France had Zidane, Vieira, Robert Pires and Claude Makelele. Australia had Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka and Kevin Muscat.

If you ever have a ticket to watch a sporting great (I don’t mean Muscat) here’s a small piece of advice: get there early.

As the pre-match warm-up ended and their team-mates headed for the changing room and a last-minute application of hair product (hi, Vincent Candela), Zidane and Christophe Dugarry, his former Bordeaux team-mate, stood 30 yards apart on the sodden pitch.

They were volleying passes back and forth. A volleyed pass, instant control, a couple of keepy-uppys, a volleyed pass. They were powering the ball at each other, controlling it with heads, chests, shoulders, even feet. It was a mesmerising display of skill and technique which demonstrated two things.

Firstly, Zidane’s intensity. It was obvious. Not by accident was Zizou the greatest creative midfielder in the world.

It’s only through individual hard work that football could ever begin to look easy. Whether is was belting a 30-yard pass to his mate in a warm-up, or scoring one of the great European Cup final goals, Zidane’s concentration on precise technique was absolute.

He even head-butts opponents with precision and creativity.

As Lizarazu says, there was a calmness about him as a footballer, at least most of the time. A rare composure and clear-sightedness that lesser players lack. In terms of his constant willingness to receive the ball he was calm. Zidane’s temper may have been volcanic but during a match he was almost always composed. Until someone got him riled.

He seemed to have more time than more limited players, and never seemed concerned by the close attention of opposition defenders.

Secondly, this warm-up routine between friends showed how great players can motivate their team-mates to improve, to push themselves further. Dugarry knew Zidane was the best he’d ever played with.

Whether in a spirit of self-improvement or competition with his old friend and former Bordeaux team-mate, Dugarry wouldn’t be outdone in this impromptu game of foot-tennis. He was outstanding, just like Zidane, and didn’t look any less gifted a footballer.

(By this point, Dugarry was back at Bordeaux, where he and Zizou served apprenticeships together. Zidane went to Juventus and won trophies. Dugarry spent unsuccessful, injury-affected seasons at AC Milan and Barcelona.)

Alas there seems to be no YouTube footage of their warm-up, so here’s a clip of Zidane and Dugarry playing a highly competitive game of petanque and talking football:

And heaven knows there is plenty of spicy YouTube stuff from the game.

It ended 1-1, Craig Moore’s header cancelled out by David Trezeguet’s second-half equaliser, in a match that should only ever be called a ‘friendly’ in inverted commas.

It’s mainly remembered for a two-footed tackle by the irrepressible Wolverhampton Wanderers legend Muscat on Dugarry. Muscat claimed Pires had spat at him in an earlier clash, which made him so angry he soon appeared to try and break both of Dugarry’s legs with one tackle.

“Football isn’t a game of skittles,” said France manager Roger Lemerre after the match. “What happened to Dugarry is something I regret bitterly … brutality is something I cannot accept.”

“I want to confirm that the tackle was not made with any malice or intent to cause injury,” countered Muscat. “The momentum of the tackle and the weather conditions contributed to the injury sustained by Dugarry.”

Dugarry was ruled out for three months, Bordeaux owner Nicolas de Tavernost demanded compensation from Soccer Australia, but Muscat and his mates had more important things to worry about.

The practice against France paid off, at least to begin with. Nine days later a Muscat penalty saw them beat Uruguay 1-0 in the first leg of the play-off.

They lost the return leg 3-0, and for the second time in four years fell at the final World Cup qualification hurdle. (Terry Venables oversaw a late, painful and arguably undeserved play-off defeat by Iran in qualifying for the 1998 World Cup.)

On the plus side, quite literally, Australia’s goal difference of +66 in the Oceania qualifying group wasn’t too shabby. They had hammered Samoa 22-0 away and 11-0 at home, but saved the real fireworks for American Samoa, edging past them 31-0 in Coffs Harbour in April 2001. It was 16-0 at half-time – a tough team talk for the ashen-faced American Samoa boss.

After his unforgettable cameo with Dugarry during the warm-up, watching Zidane in a real football match was pretty special too. His awareness, vision and ball control were like nothing I’d ever seen.

It was difficult to take your eyes off him mainly because he was always involved. More than once during the match, if a team-mate failed to understand his intention of a disguised pass or a quickly executed one-two, he’d stare at them with a mixture of confusion and disbelief, as if to say: “How could you not see that?” At the time, he was the best.

France were eliminated from the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea without scoring a goal, winning a single point (beaten by Senegal and Denmark, they mustered a 0-0 draw with Australia’s play-off conquerers Uruguay). Maybe it was the jet-lag.

Dugarry retired in 2005, presumably with a sore knee and a determination to give Kevin Muscat a wide berth in wet conditions. Although he lacked the recognition and club trophies of Zidane, World Cup and European Championship winners’ medals was hardly a poor return. He was also inducted into Birmingham City’s Hall of Fame.

Zidane won everything at Real Madrid, and now coaches Real Madrid ‘B’, anticipating a crack at the big job. Like Muscat he might be remembered for occasional bursts of physical violence, but he could play a little bit too.

Two Arsene Wengers

Around the time Karim Benzema really was scoring against Honduras and Jonathan Pearce was acting like your dad with a new TV remote control, nearby spoke a voice of calm and reason.

Just along from the confused, hole-digging Pearce sat Arsene Wenger, pundit for France’s TF1 channel and sometime Arsenal manager.

“Oui, c’est un but!” said Arsene confidently claiming that Benzema had scored even when they were showing the first incident when the ball hadn’t crossed the line. Seconds later he was proved right.

Arsene Wenger, the man who famously never sees anything from the touchline, and who was now sitting some distance further back in a TV gantry was the first to call the goal, and then allowed himself a small chuckle.

If France are having a good World Cup, so too is Wenger.

But this is a different Wenger from the one normally seen in England.

Without the stresses and worries of constantly watching Jack Wilshere chasing after a ball he has just miscontrolled, Wenger cuts a far more relaxed figure.

Gone is the arm-waving, the sullen look to the floor and the weary, grumpy post-match interview.

Here is a smiling, relaxed Wenger in an apparent constant good mood but daring to say more than he ever does in the UK.

He called David Silva “smug” for trying to chip Holland’s goalkeeper when Spain were 1-0 up in their group game and before it all went wrong for the soon-to-be former World champions.

In the same match he spoke for all right-thinking people everywhere when claiming Sergio Busquets deserved to be fouled.

In France’s match versus Nigeria, he spotted the African side’s weakness on the left within minutes and chuckled along approvingly when the ref was called “Anglo-Saxon” for allowing a challenge that would normally get a withering stare at Arsenal’s Emirates Theme Park.

To see Wenger this relaxed in England, you would have to go to his favourite eatery in Whetstone, north London, where he heads on Saturdays but allegedly only ever after Arsenal win, i.e., never in May.

Another reason for enjoying Wenger on French TV is that some Arsenal fans act like former Kremlinologists, trying to decipher each of his comments to see which player the club might sign in the coming weeks.

Thus, when he spoke recently about Chile’s Arturo Vidal as “one of the best midfielders in the world”, a small yelp of excitement could be heard across north London that somewhere there was a small, technically proficient midfielder they had not signed.

There was also much excitement when it was revealed the night Chile played Holland, Wenger had skipped punditry duties to “talk to agents”. Maybe even Morgan Schneiderlin’s?

(During this year’s Champions League final Wenger said on air that “Benzema will certainly play in the Premier League one day”, which one Arsenal website claimed “all but confirmed” he was on his way to sample the delights of Holloway).

Wenger is helped along in his punditry by the implausibly cool Bixente Lizarazu and commentator Christian Jeanpierre.

When they do a piece to camera the trio always sit in the same positions – Lizarazu, naturally, on the left, a cramped-looking Wenger in the middle, then Jeanpierre – much like Ant and Dec.

There is little chance of mixing them up though.

You may remember Lizarazu as a World Cup-winning left-back, but that barely scratches the surface.

Not only does he dislike Patrice Evra, he is a European Jiu-Jitsu champion, surfer, comforts large-breasted women and weeping men in TV adverts, has bouffant hair, makes friends on the beach and also has great skin, apparently.

The other notable thing about French coverage – at least on the national broadcaster TF1 – is the lack of half-time punditry.

When the first-half ends, 15 minutes of adverts begin. This may sound like hell, it really isn’t.

Instead of Lee Dixon or Fabio Cannavaro, French viewers get Robert Pattinson trying to look moody on New York rooftops, Marcel Desailly in a hot tub and an advert about a French dad who only wakes up every four years to watch World Cups.

Somehow it has an invigorating effect; instead of watching people tell you about what you have just seen for the past 45 minutes, the viewer comes into the second half, fresh, primed, raring to go, to dig in and bravely watch another 45 minutes of football.

Roux Are You?

Remember Auxerre?

The tiny provincial team who rose from nowhere – well, Burgundy – to become French champions.

The club which dominated the Coupe de France (French FA Cup) between the mid-1990s and 2005, winning it four times and even clinching the double in 1996.

Auxerre, with its population of less than 40,000 (roughly the same as Accrington), who were playing Champions League football just four seasons ago, while finishing third in Ligue 1.

The sleepy little side against which Paolo Maldini made his European debut and watched on helplessly as AC Milan lost 3-1. Auxerre, who reached the UEFA Cup semi-finals only to lose on penalties to big, bad Borussia Dortmund.

The team which gave the footballing world Bacary Sagna, Basile Boli, Djibril Cisse and Eric Cantona while all the while being managed forever by everyone’s favourite uncle and visionary Guy Roux, who was in the hot seat for every year but one between 1964 and 2005.

That Auxerre.

(Btw, when at Auxerre, Cantona did this among other things. A foul so revered in French football it received its own article in Le Monde 25 years after the event)

Auxerre was the club that was loved by football hipsters, before such people were even given that name and instead were referred to as bores.

They would be mentioned reverentially, breathlessly by the kind of people who bought World Soccer magazine and actually read it.

When they won the league in 1996, their average gate was just over 11,000. They finished ahead of PSG and Monaco in second and third place.

Those who eulogised about Auxerre were the same kind of fans who could tell you the colour of Carl Zeiss Jena’s away kit, how many clean sheets Rinat Dasaev had kept last season or the strength in depth of the Eredivisie.

Auxerre were even given the highest hipster accolade of all; compared to the great Dinamo Tbilisi side which destroyed The Footballing Academy of West Ham in 1981.

Yes, that’s right, there was a time when beating West Ham at Upton Park was used as a measuring stick for football teams. It may or may not be coincidence but at the very same time the measuring stick for best record in the UK – sales – was being won by Shakin’ Stevens with “This Ole House”.

Back to Auxerre or AJA – Association de la Jeunesse Auxerroise – to give the club its full name.

On Saturday afternoon, the current Auxerre team will nervously trot out for their Ligue 2 fixture at equally anxious Caen.

The home side will be worried as they grip perilously to the final promotion spot in third place, heading four teams tied on 50 points.

Auxerre are worried for quite different reasons.

They hover one place, 17th, and one point, 36, above the relegation zone.

Four seasons after they were playing Real Madrid they could sink into the margins of the third tier of French football, a sort of footballing neverland akin in the reality TV world to being placed in the secret spare room in Big Brother after being voted out by your housemates.

Sandwiched between the powers of FC Istres and Stade Laval, Auxerre have six matches left to try and stay up. Four of those matches are against the current top 5, including one against as-good-as-promoted league leaders Metz.

Their best hope for three points may be the match against Le Havre, and even better, it is at home which means two things are in their favour: Not only will they have the backing of their admittedly dwindling support but also they won’t have to visit the town of Le Havre.

Winning has proved difficult in the last few months for Auxerre, the side having taken maximum points only once in the past nine games.

In fact, winning has proved difficult for the past few seasons.

They were only relegated from Ligue 1 in 2012 – after 32 years in the top flight – and struggled in their first season back in Ligue 2.

With a debt of over €16 million they had to sell off some of their better players, including young forward Paul-Georges Ntep, who when presented with a possible choice of signing for QPR and Stoke, chose to play his football in the cathedral city of Rennes.

As well as shedding players they have, surprisingly for a club that employed Roux for 895 games, been shedding managers.

In the nine years since Roux retired, Auxerre have tried five managers, the last one being sacked just last month.

Among those who tried and failed to walk in Roux’s shoes was a former Tottenham coach (is there any other kind?), Jacques Santini.

Things look bleak; the playing staff is young and inexperienced, the team can’t score and relegation rivals have an easier run-in.

Even if they manage to scrape through this season, finances will probably dictate another tough campaign ahead next year, though at least with Ajaccio coming down from Ligue 1 there is a French side who have every chance of imitating Wolves, pre-Kenny Jackett. Sadly, if feels like the third tier beckons.

Football should be in constant flux and not too sentimental and if Auxerre do go down it will be their own damn fault. It also shows just how much Roux overachieved.

But in an era when French football, like others, is so dominated by money, the further demise of Auxerre will be one more sign of a little less romance. Let’s face it, it could be a long time before they finish above PSG and Monaco again.

A Massif six-pointer

There’s a big match about to take place in France and it has nothing to do with PSG and Chelsea.

On Sunday evening Olympique Lyonnais take on Saint-Etienne. Both clubs are pushing for the final Champions League place, the first two having basically been secured, inevitably, by PSG and Monaco.

Lyon and St-Etienne are scrapping with Lille to get into Europe’s big party, even if third place in Ligue 1 only secures an invitation to the qualification rounds.

With just eight games to go Lille are third with 54 points, St Etienne fourth on 51 and Lyon fifth on 48.

Lille are obviously the favourites, but unfortunately they are also a coma-inducing team who average just over a goal a game and have scored just six more goals all season than bottom club and Sunday league wannabes, Ajaccio.

Europe has enough to contend with at present – new Cold War, financial crisis, record unemployment etc – without being forced to watch Lille every other Tuesday or Wednesday.

Which leaves either Lyon or Saint-Etienne as the people’s choice. And who you choose might come down to who you vote for.

What gives Sunday’s fixture extra spice is the two are also local rivals joined not only by a desperation to scrape into next season’s Champions League at the other’s expense but also separated by some 30 miles and a class war.

Lyon and St-Etienne – located in and around that area that used to make you half-snigger in school Geography lessons, the Massif Central – contest the “Derby du Rhone” and there is something wonderfully sniffy about the fixture.

It is white collar versus blue, high-tech start-ups versus traditional heavy industry, refined regional capital versus backwater, River Plate v Boca, Frasier versus Roseanne.

Lyon is France’s second biggest city, all haute cuisine and beaujolais wine, Unesco World Heritage site, Roman architecture, birthplace of cinema and home to Interpol and high-tech pharmaceutical industries. It wears its white collar proud, freshly laundered and neatly pressed.

On the wrong side of the tracks is dirty-faced cousin Saint-Etienne. A traditional centre for France’s coal mining industry, weapons and bike manufacturing, the town was backbone of France’s industrial revolution, it has a tram and is resolutely blue collar.

Suitably the two sides do not seem to like each other but this has manifested itself in strange ways on the terraces.

It has been noted here before but some of the chants and banners used by supporters of both clubs are wonderfully haughty, and take a little more preparatory work than: “Who are ya?”

Lyon fans came up with possibly the most high-minded, breathtakingly middle-class putdown ever heard at a football ground when they were heard to sniff at a recent derby: “While we were inventing cinema your fathers were dying in coal mines.”

To which the only response wasn’t – surprisingly – “What the fuckin’ ell was that?” but St Etienne’s noble treatise on alcohol and capitalism: “Lyon is like beaujolais – it’s about business and it’s nasty.”

Take that!

The insults aren’t just confined to the fans. In 2012, Lyon’s players got into trouble while celebrating their Coupe de France win at Lyon City Hall for a terrace ditty which adapts the chorus of an old Charles Aznavour classic “Emmenez-moi” to attack St Etienne.

The Lyon version goes something along the lines of: “Take me to the Geoffroy-Guichard (Saint-Etienne’s home ground) / Take me the country of the bastards / It seems to me that misery would support the Greens.” Still it is a good tune.

Until recent years, the fixture went a long way to determining who won Ligue 1.

Before PSG took over these were the two sides who had dominated French football for the longest stretches of time. Saint-Etienne still hold a record 10 league titles before being brought to their knees by the one thing that always seems to do for French teams, a financial crisis.

While “Les Verts” have done little since the mid-1980s, what made it all the more galling for their supporters was that the new footballing force in the country (before Qatar’s investment in PSG) was Lyon.

In 2002, Lyon – “Les Gones” – won their first Ligue 1 title; in 2008 they won their seventh. Consequently, this clash has consistently had an edge. So much so that these are two teams loathe to share players.

Bernard Lacombe, fast-scoring French star from the 1978 World Cup, spent nine years and almost 300 games at Lyon before transferring to St Etienne. Lacombe was so fed up with the booing he received despite scoring 29 goals in 39 games that he fled to Bordeaux after just one season.

One player the clubs have shared though is current Lyon striker Bafetimbi Gomis.

Lyon spent 13 million euros to bring Gomis to the Land of the Cinema from Saint-Etienne in 2009, just the sixth player to have ever been transferred directly between the two sides, despite the fact that the clubs have a combined age of over 150.

Lyon are probably favourites to win on Sunday night, having not lost at the Stade de Gerland to Saint-Etienne since 2010. But for once, both sides main concern should be Lille who face lower-table fluff Guingamp at home.

Whoever wins, let’s hope Lille lose.

Gourcuff’s Off

Like many French people, Christian Gourcuff will be looking for a new job in the summer.

Earlier this week, Gourcuff finally announced that he will not be renewing his contract as the coach of Ligue 1 minnows Lorient at the end of the season, bringing to a close his time at the club which has seen him as the team’s manager in the 1980s, 90s, 2000s and whatever the latest decade is called.

“That’s life. Everything comes to an end,” a dry-eyed Gourcuff sniffed as his departure became public knowledge, unwittingly offering hope to thousands of fans in parts of north London that it is possible to be French and leave your long-term job as a coach.

“This will be the end of an era and the beginning of another,” he dead-panned. Gourcuff is a guy who could make Roy Keane look sentimental.

Manager leaves small-town club hardly seems big news, but Gourcuff’s departure genuinely is noteworthy. Sponsors have already hinted that they may pull the plug because of his leaving.

For Gourcuff has spent many of the past 30 or so years performing minor miracles at Ligue 1’s most westerly, windswept club. He has dragged them up from the sixth tier of French football to make them a mainstay of Ligue 1, playing a neat brand of attacking football and developing stars including Andre Pierre Gignac and sad-faced accordion-lover Laurent Koscielny.
http://www.thelocal.fr/20140227/koscielny-french-footballer-steps-in-to-save-accordian-factory

Currently, Lorient are 12th in Ligue 1, eight points ahead of the third bottom side. Last season they finished a hugely creditable eighth, behind only the usual big names of French football and Nice.

Gourcuff, whose son Yoann also just happens to be one of the most elegant midfielders in France, is like a Sliding Doors Arsene Wenger. He is the one that stayed behind in France, but has done very well thank you. Oh, he also happens to be a maths professor.

His leaving is a kind of lower-rent version of Sir Alex saying goodbye to the hot seat at Old Trafford, except with fewer club-endorsed banners and one less centre circle speech to see him on his way. Another similarity is that the way things are going David Moyes could also end up replacing him.

When he first started managing Lorient in 1982, Channel 4 was broadcasting Countdown, an unpopular Tory government ruled Britain, a Socialist ruled France while having affairs and Russia controlled what went on in Ukraine.

Around the same time Arsene Wenger had just been appointed Strasbourg’s youth coach, Manchester City spent millions and were relegated from Division One and Chelsea avoided dropping into Division Three by two points.

It was a very different world, children. It certainly was for Lorient. They had just recovered from bankruptcy and were floundering in a fashion that could have seen the Brittany club twinned with Aldershot Town. Enter the 27-year-old player manager midfielder Gourcuff.

His impact was immediate. By 1983, he had managed to push Lorient into the fifth tier; a year later and the club had its second successive promotion. Impressive enough, except for in 1985 Lorient claimed their third straight promotion and landed, their strange orange shirts and all, in Ligue 2.

Gourcuff then embarked on a small tour of other clubs before heading back to Lorient in 1991, who by then had fallen into Division Three. This time he began a 10-year stint at the club by getting them immediately promoted, then in 1998 helped the club up to Ligue 1 for the very first time.

A boardroom takeover in 2001 saw Gourcuff leave the club but his team went onto to claim its first major domestic honour by winning the Coupe de France (France’s FA Cup) in 2002. They also reached the final of the Coupe de la Ligue in the same season.

By 2003, Gourcuff was back and has been in charge ever since. Lorient have spent the last eight seasons in Ligue 1, despite most of that time selling their best players, another one being WBA’s Morgan Amalfitano.

But if all political careers end in failure, then most football careers end in rancour.

Gourcuff has once again fallen foul of the board, this time with a young City type Loic Fery – think Michael J Fox in The Secret of My Success – who is Lorient’s president. The club’s decision this season to sell midfielder Mario Lemina to Marseille rupturing the relationship for good.

In total, in three stints at the club he has spent a grand total of 25 years managing Lorient. A quarter of a century during which time the Channel Tunnel has opened, the World Wide Web has invaded all our lives and most improbably, Birmingham City won a domestic honour. In pure footballing terms, Gourcuff started managing Lorient before Neymar learned how to dive.

So where next? For Gourcuff all roads seem to point to Bordeaux, currently ninth in Ligue 1 and treading water. For Lorient – look away now Glasgow Rangers’ fans – Paul Le Guen looks likely to take charge. And if it all goes wrong, well there is no rule that says Gourcuff cannot manage Lorient for a fourth time…

Samir’s Long Summer

It’s not known what Samir Nasri did on Wednesday night.

Maybe he stayed at home and watched footage of his first goal ever shown on TV.

Maybe.

What he didn’t do was play for France in their 2-0 friendly win against the Netherlands. Four games out from the World Cup finals and Nasri was nowhere to be seen.

Samir Nasri – the next big thing of French football, the boy who has been compared to Zinedine Zidane since the age of 11, slayer of Sunderland and Chelsea in big cup matches in recent days, Premier League winner, a member of “Generation 1987” (think England’s “Golden Generation” but with promise), former French Player of the Year and who first started playing for his country at under-16 level – and he couldn’t even make the squad of an ordinary but blossoming French side.

How could France not pick such a talent?

“Because the guy is a bell-end,” came the reply from one friend.

It is not an uncommon view in France.

Recently, the country’s most well-known football pundit, Pierre Menes (a large guy rumoured to be known as “Two-seats Menes” for taking up extra space in the press box when he covered Arsenal) called Nasri “a guy who brings a disease to the squad”.

He is “obviously” good enough for the team, added Menes, but Nasri is a “real problem” who will probably not go to Brazil. Alan Shearer-type punditry this is not.

Nasri has long been unpopular, seen by the public as yet one more tiresome example of a self-interested, entitled modern footballer.

He was the young player who answered a reporter’s question about France’s exit at the 2012 Euros with a blunt: “Fuck you! Go fuck your mother, you son of a bitch!”

In some ways this is less offensive than, “obviously the lads will be disappointed with that”, but Nasri was in big trouble.

France’s manager at the time, Laurent Blanc, called him “embarrassing”.

He was also the young player who sat in Thierry Henry’s seat on the French team coach, initially refused to budge and upset that ray-of-sunshine William Gallas in the process.

This not only conjures up a comical image of the behind-the-scenes stuff which goes on in football – forget cameras in the tunnel, this is the kind of stuff we want to see; who sits where, which player likes who and does anyone take their headphones off etc – but Nasri also believes led him to being excluded from the 2010 World Cup squad because Gallas was a senior player at the time with the ear of the manager.

In an interview after South Africa, Nasri said he did want to miss out on the next World Cup.

He may be out of luck and not just because of his personality.

Tentatively, France is starting to like its national team again.

For several years, the country has turned its back on Les Bleus, like a scorned teenage lover only raising its floppy fringe from staring at its shoes to revel in the team’s misfortune.

But now the pair have locked eyes and are flirting with each other again.

The change came on November 19 last year when France beat Ukraine 3-0, overturning a 2-0 first leg play-off deficit, to somehow squeeze their way through to the World Cup Finals.
France likes a winner, and this was indeed a great victory.

The difference from the dismal first-leg performance? France dropped Nasri. For that second leg he was on the bench.

On Wednesday, they beat Holland in a friendly, keeping Marseille’s Mathieu Valbuena on the right-hand side of midfield, the place where Samir played.

This time Nasri didn’t even make the squad.

Only a friendly perhaps, but the manner with which France played in the first-half (complete with a Valbuena assist) has got the country excited. Two goals could have been three or four. (For the record, Holland were poorer than England against Denmark).

“Something is happening!” exclaimed an excited L’Equipe on its front page after the game.

And if it truly is – and don’t forget France got drawn in a group with Switzerland, Ecuador and Honduras – the last thing many want to see is a step backwards, which, in this case equates with selecting Nasri again.

Suddenly, France has a team playing decent football again and crucially it is a team which the public can like.

There are three more games before they start their World Cup odyssey, against Norway, Paraguay and Jamaica.

It is not unimaginable that France will win all three, which makes it not unimaginable that Samir Nasri will spend his summer anywhere but Brazil.

Keeping it Djibril

QPR fans might not believe it, but Djibril Cisse is back.

On Saturday evening, he will slip on a Bastia shirt for the first time and trot out for the away fixture at Valenciennes as he begins life with his 10th football club. Look, he was so excited, he bought his own Premium Class plane ticket and everything.

Joining a club currently hovering in 13th position in Ligue 1, without a league win in four and giving every indication that they could join the relegation battle, seems like a predictable career trajectory for a 32-year-old speeding towards the end of his career.

Cisse gives the impression of being a slightly more glamorous Dave Kitson, suddenly popping up and scoring a goal – or getting sent off – for a team you had no idea he was playing for.

Between his last disastrous spell at Loftus Road a year ago and Saturday night, Cisse has squeezed in two more teams onto his lengthening CV, Al-Gharafa in Qatar and Russia’s Kuban Krasnador. He managed five goals in 24 games for those two.

More importantly he also launched his own fragrance, Mr Lenoir. Honest. Want to know want Djibril smells like?

Well it is a combination of “woody, spicy and amber, from a blend of notes of bergamot, lavender, black pepper, cashmere wood, cardamom, labdanum, patchouli, vanilla and musk”.

It is not known if Shaun Derry borrowed a bottle from Cisse or just stayed with the Deep Heat.

But Cisse thinks his career is far from over.

The main reason he is back playing in Ligue 1? He wants to go to Brazil.

By playing in France again, he hopes to remind national team coach, Didier Deschamps, that he is good enough for the World Cup.

He told L’Equipe this week that he “would never let go” of his dream to play for Les Bleus again, a team he “loves”.

It may not be that far-fetched an idea.

Having stumbled to Brazil and then being handed a seemingly fortuitous draw – Switzerland, Ecuador and Honduras – there is a rare feel-good factor surrounding France’s national side at the moment.

That will disappear in the run-up to the summer, when the battles over who should play surface again.

The French frontline is far from settled. Olivier Giroud is in pole position at the moment, having taken over from the hapless Karim Benzema. In support is Marseille’s Andre-Pierre Gignac.

Currently all three look about as good a bet for playing all France’s games as Theo Walcott does for England.

Which is where Cisse comes in, maybe.

He played at the 2002 and 2010 finals, where France were eliminated both times in the first round, only missing out in 2006, where they got to the final, because of a broken leg. He last played for France in 2011.

He may not be a good luck charm but he is on the fringes of the squad.

Of the top 5 scorers in the French league, only one, Alexandre Lacazette is French. He has scored nine times.

Among those not considered at the moment, but doing well, is Lyon’s Bafetimbi Gomis, who is scoring a goal every other game after 14 appearances.

France still needs a forward who can actually find the net and Cisse’s record at least compares with his rivals.

He has scored nine times in 41 matches; Giroud five in 26, Gignac four in 17 and Benzema 18 in 64, but he is just coming off the back of playing 1,666 minutes for France without scoring, which made him a national figure of fun.

Loic Remy may be a better bet for France, but he has his own problems.

One potential stumbling block are Bastia themselves.

They have only scored 21 times in 19 Ligue 1 games, they are about as much fun as Norwich, so getting any service may prove difficult for Djibril.

But on Saturday night, a man with an eye-catching haircut and gloves, no doubt, will be a man on a mission.

And he will smell fantastic.