Zidane fears 'end of a cycle'

France’s legendary playmaker Zinedine Zidane faced up to the end of an era as the reigning champions tumbled out of Euro 2004 at the hands of Greece.

At 32, Zidane perhaps has one more tournament left in him but others such as Bixente Lizarazu, Marcel Desailly and Claude Makelele face the end of their international careers.

Zidane said: “We are all responsible for our elimination. We did not pull together and yes, it could be the end of a cycle.”

France coach Jacques Santini, who is heading to manager Tottenham next season, refused to speculate whether the core of the side that helped Les Bleus to the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European championship were now history.

He said: “Someone else will be taking my post in August and regarding the players of that generation, it’s up to him to decide what they will do with their future.”

Santini pointed the finger of blame at his players’ lethargy and lack of ideas as the reason for one of the biggest upsets in the history of the tournament - Greece triumphing in the quarter-final in Lisbon’s Jose Alvalade stadium thanks to Angelos Charisteas’ bullet header.

They will play Denmark or the Czech Republic for a place in the final.

Santini claimed his star-studded side ran out of ideas when confronted with Greece’s packed defence and did not match their opponents’ commitment in terms of running.

He said: “When the space shrinks you need an athletic element at its utmost and perhaps especially today we may not have been individually athletic or fit enough.

“There was too much technical left-over and lack of clear ideas in the last minutes of the game.

“It was something we talked about before the competition, that even if we had more ball possession than our opponents there was too much ’left-over’ – bad passes which in the end penalised us.

“The four teams that we played had strict defensive principles and had compact blocks with 10 players just sticking in front of their goalkeeper. We could hardly ever solve those problems that those four teams posed us.

“Our poor technical quality has not really allowed us to create problems for these compact blocks we had in front of us and of course our opponents knew where the strengths of our team lay.”

Greece fully deserved their win as France looked completely out of sorts and badly missed the injured Patrick Vieira in midfield.

But Thierry Henry cursed France’s luck saying: “It’s true we didn’t play well in the group phase or in the first half here but in the second half the team rediscovered its direction, there was some good movement but it was at that moment we were caught on the counter-attack and they knew how to take advantage of scoring that goal.

“I had a good chance at the end of the match, for once I headed the ball well but it went just past the post.

“Fortune didn’t smile on us and that makes our defeat all the more bitter.”