I have to go do African Cup of Naitons stuff for the next few hours and don’t even have time to go add in spaces in the names, but wanted to get this posted.
The somewhat unexpected (but not unwelcome) ones for me: Jérémy Menez, Gaël Clichy, Steve Mandanda.
And Jean-Alain Boumsong’s [...]

To get ready for the Euros, les Bleus will now be playing three games in France in late May and early June against South American teams.
(Please, please, please do not let anybody get injured.)
Tuesday, May 27
Friendly
France-Ecuador at Grenoble, Stade des Alpes
Saturday, May 31
Friendly
France-Paraguay at Stadium de Toulouse
Tuesday, June 3
Friendly
France-Colombia at Stade de France

I stumbled on this article when I was looking for more Sagnol news. (Of which there is none, of course. Curse this long Bundesliga winter break! Don’t they know if affects our February friendlies?)
But that’s not my point. My point is: Fullbacks. Specifically this quote, with which I [...]

I was looking for something else and stumbled across this photo.
This was another one of those relationships that kind of boggles the mind, a la Raymond and Estelle.
Fabien Barthez and supermodel Linda Evangelista were together for several years, starting, if I’m not mistaken, shortly after WC 1998. They almost had a [...]

Djibril Cisse has scored five goals in two games, moving himself up to sixth among Ligue 1’s top scorers after a miserable start to the season.
Nicolas Anelka just switched teams, and notched his first goal for Chelsea today. (Here’s the goal. Watch quickly, becuase these things never stay up for much more [...]

I’ve been busy helping out with the African Cup of Nations coverage on the World Cup Blog main page, so it somehow slipped my attention that there is an A’ game with Congo on Feb. 5. Is this a surprise to anybody else?
The lists for both the Feb. 6 Spain A game [...]

Remember last month when I said I’d read that Christian Karembeu was thinking about reconnecting with his buddies from 1998 for two matches, but I couldn’t find verification?
It’s now officially showing up on the fff site. And yes, there will be two games: One in Karembeu’s homeland of New Caledonia on May 26, [...]

A few updates for our France boys:
Lassana Diarra has burned his bridges with Arsenal and journeyed on to Portsmouth. This I don’t get. And he’s really gone out of his way to offend the Arsenal faithful in the process. Words of wisdom to Lassana: Dig in, hunker down and work hard, [...]

I was googling something completely different when I stumbled on this list of French soccer vocabulary. For some reason it made me smile. Even with this depressing introductory paragraph:
On Sunday, 9 July, France lost to Italy in the 2006 World Cup Final. Here is a list of French vocabulary related to soccer and [...]

And you thought November was going to be dark and dreary.
It just got a little less so for France fans with the announcement that les Bleus will be playing a friendly against Uruguay on November 19. Stade de France at 21h00.
Uruguay is currently ranked 28th in the FIFA rankings. [...]