Not all is well with the French

The past 6 months have been a real roller coaster ride for Les Bleus. A horrible world cup qualifying campaign, saved many would say by the return of the old guard: Zidane, Makelele and Thuram. France would qualify at the last possible moment (having to beat Cyprus by a large margin while hoping that Ireland-Switerland did not end in other than a draw). Then France saw a difficult preparation campaign - questions swirling around Coupet vs Barthez (Coupet even left camp threatening to quit the national team). With Barthez finally winning out the starting role....a very questionable selection. The world cup also did not get off to a great start, needing to defeat a weak Togo squad to qualify for the knock out stage...the rest we know is history with a glorious run to the finals, only to cruely lose in shoot out.

It is clear that this amazing run secured Domenech as manager of the national team. However I still scratch my head about some of the activities that are occuring and still swirling around the national team. Granted, France has come out of the starting blocks for the Euro qualifiers with an expected easy victory at Georgia and with an exceptional 3-1 victory versus Italy. A game where France could have easily scored another 1 or 2 goals, in particular a spectacular save Buffon made on Govou in the second half.

Domenech has angered managers such as Houllier, Wenger and Mourinho. Domenech recalled Makelele, a player that had announced his international retirement post World Cup, ending up winning the arm wrestling match with Chelsea to secure the midfielder's services, but in doing so appeared to have lost any good will from Mourinho and possibly alienating Makelele. Domenech then decided to play Henry for the full time in a friendly even though the Premiership had not full started and it would have been prefered by Wenger and Arsenal not to see their star striker play a full 90 minutes in a meaningless match...again not making any friends. With Houllier expressing some irration with Domenech deciding to call up 8 players from the French champion, yet no communications between both managers. Finally, news today out of the French camp is that Coupet still has a major chip on his shoulder with regards to his backup status during the World Cup.

With all these incidents one has to wonder if things go poorly for France will Domenech lose his team and lose his ability to manage the national team. I have never been the biggest fan of the players Domenech has called up, nor his system of play...however results have proven me wrong...so far. Also, Domenech has never been a "conventional" manager, believing in astrology etc to manage and select his squad. Maybe too much is made of these incidents, we all know that The Portugese Man of Whine, Mourinho, complains about everything and sees everyone against him (and his "poor" club). His use of the term "slavery" in mention of the Makelele call ups were a little over the top, but expected from such a bag of hot air. Houllier and Wenger are more rational managers, but both managers are also masters of using the press to get what they want and get their messages across to others.

These issues always arise when it comes to the club versus country debate in international football. However I think Domenech needs to heed the warning signs, and maybe look to approach the personal side of being a manager with a different tact. He does manage one of the European power houses in football, having come in second at the World Cup makes that spot light's glare even stronger. Domenech has the talent pool to do something special, but he needs to focus on the football as much as possible, allowing issues such as phone calls and strong arm tactics to get players on the field will only distract from this.