France’s mirror never lies

LAST winter, I was sitting on the terrace of a restaurant where the big wigs of the French FA regularly draw on their expense accounts to lunch in some style.

The man talking to me that day — and still is, but maybe not for long, if President Sarkozy has his way — was one of the highest-ranking members of this administration, who’d backed Raymond Domenech after the Euro 2008 debacle. But you wouldn’t have guessed his backing for the manager with his parting words. “Domenech is poisoning everything,” he said, “but we don’t know how we can get rid of him.”

Several months later, in London, I had a long talk with another influential figure from the Fédération Française de Football. “We won’t be in the last 16 in the World Cup,” he assured me. “Not with Domenech.”