French mourn loss of their golden age

“I stopped watching the Arsenal game when it was 2-2,” France coach Laurent Blanc confessed on Sunday evening, proving yet again that managers can be worse than fans when it comes to judging how a game is going.

Surprisingly, Arsenal’s Bacary Sagna isn’t in the France squad for the needle match against Germany tomorrow night, whereas Louis Saha of Tottenham is called up for the first time in two years. That’s partly because Karim Benzema is injured, but it also illustrates a lack of options in attack.

“We have two or three very good players, like Benzema and Franck Ribery,” Michel Platini told a German newspaper on Friday. “The rest are very average. Germany have the best team in Europe.”