Fearful French face final curtain

Paris does not possess a Last Chance Saloon.

The nearest thing to it is a restaurant called La Dernière Séance on Avenue de la République: the Final Sitting, named after one of those moody French songs from the 1970s mourning the loss of the local picture house. “An old man weeps in the corner,” sang Eddy Mitchell. “His cinema has shut, it was the final sitting, and the final curtain has fallen....”

Should France go out of the World Cup against Ukraine tonight in the Stade de France it won’t be quite so drastic, but the mood has been sombre since their 2-0 defeat in Kiev on Friday.