France announce pre World Cup friendlies

Thanks to Memejfr giving us the heads up here is the list of pre-World Cup matches Les Bleus will be playing next summer - China, Tunisia and Costa Rica.

Les Bleus faced the Chinese prior to the last World Cup, the most notable event from that match was the horrific leg break for Cisse, taking him out of the World Cup and allowing Domenech to add Gouvou rather than a certain Anelka...hmmmm, wonder if France had Anelka on the bench if the finals would have turned out differently. I would assume the China match is scheduled to give the squad an average opponent they can get a win from. Costa Rica is from the same region as Mexico and were in a play off with Uruguay for the World Cup...so a worthy World Cup caliber opponent. Tunisia will be interesting based on the history between the nations. There are plenty of players that play in France or have strong ties to France so they will be motivated to show well. In addition they play in the same region as the last group opponent for France - South Africa (and like that opponent will be playing in front of their home crowd since the match will be in Tunisia). In addition, the way the knock out stages are set up, France could be facing another African nation - Nigeria - in the first round of the knock outs. Les Bleus will be training there as well, an interesting choice of location...I would think that Tignes and its high elevation would be the preferred location (that might be the pre-training area).