A Strong Start to Laurent Blanc’s French Reign

Originally published on soccerstateofmind.wordpress.com

Following their embarrassing, controversy-filled exit from the World Cup, new France coach Laurent Blanc has decided to suspend the entire 23-man World Cup roster from playing in next month’s friendly against Norway.

On the surface, it’s a bold move but it’s also a brilliant one. For the sake of the headlines, it sends a strong message that the behavior won’t be tolerated. On the other hand, it comes in a friendly were there’s nothing at stake and, if anything, amounts to giving the players a “vacation” from national team duty. Quite frankly, a number of these players probably wouldn’t have played against Norway anyway. Let’s not forget that Domenech left a number of quality players off the World Cup roster who are now available to step in and play against Norway.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “After the stunt they pulled at the World Cup, you think these guys deserve a ‘vacation’?” Actually, yes, that’s exactly what they need. Let’s not kid ourselves, the greatest problem with the France World Cup team was the coach. We all knew it before the tournament began, including the French Football Federation (FFF). Now if the FFF knew he wasn’t the right man for the job, and former French players knew he wasn’t the right man for the job, and everyone in the media knew he wasn’t the right man for the job (including me, scroll down to #10), and the fans knew he wasn’t the right man for the job, how do you imagine the guys who actually had to play for him felt? Leaving Domenech in charge was an incredibly poor decision by the FFF and they should accept some responsibility for what happened in South Africa. It should have come as no surprise to them that the powder keg they lit would eventually blow up in their face.

That said, I’m not condoning the actions of the French players. We’ve all worked for bad bosses and dysfunctional organizations but have had to suck it up and do our jobs. They should have realized what was at stake while on the biggest stage in the world and reserved their protests until after the tournament. But for Laurent Blanc, the silver lining in this is that they did come together as a team, albeit at the wrong time, to support a teammate. As a coach, you want a team that’s willing to fight for each other and that’s what Blanc is inheriting.

So the task at hand for Blanc is to appease the masses by punishing the World Cup players, while at the same time earning the trust of the players and not alienating them. This is what this “punishment” amounts to. The French players aren’t bad guys, they simply lacked leadership, which seemingly they have now. They also had to overcome an enormous amount of adversity and criticism throughout qualifying. By the time they reached South Africa, they were emotionally exhausted and this culminated in their collective nervous breakdown. By not including these players in France’s first post-World Cup match, Blanc is doing them an enormous favor which should go a long way in earning their respect moving forward.