Au Revoir to Trezeguet?

November 9th, 2006 | by: Laurie | View Comments

The France-Greece lineup is out. (I’ll post the full list later today after I’ve had a few minutes to look it over.) The big news: David Trezeguet’s out, eighteen-year-old Karim Benzema of Lyon is in. I suppose we can’t be too terribly surprised. (Disappointed, yes. Surprised, no.) *Sigh.* Trezeguet is twenty-nine. No spring chicken, soccer-wise. What do you think? The end of his international career? Despite being one of the top-ten all-time scorers in Champions League and scoring the golden goal in Euro 2000, “Trezegol” never quite clicked for France in the Domenech era, at least not with Arsenal striker and BFF Thierry Henry. (This link’s to a video in French, but if you speak the language it’s kind of sweet.)

Alas. Trezeguet has long led my list of “Bleus I Would Most Like to Adopt.” Seriously, ladies, if you’re a mom and a France fan, tell me that after the World Cup final you didn’t want to just take him home, wrap him in a quilt and feed him chicken soup. I love Trezeguet.

Well, if he’s gone, at least he leaves on a positive note — the two goals scored against Faroe Islands in October rather than the disastrous World Cup final. Granted, yes, this was, y’know, Faroe Islands. (Has anybody who doesn’t live there actually heard of this country?) But he and Nicolas Anelka managed three goals between the two of them in 30 minutes — more than Henry and Saha managed in twice that. Kind of gives you a tantalizing whiff of What Might Have Been…

But looking on the bright side, at least he’s still doing well this season with Juventus, working hard to move them out of Serie B. (Please tell me that his success in Serie B is not kind of like dropping the Yankees into AAA and then saying, “Gosh, isn’t A-Rod doing well!” I’m going to choose to believe there are no similarities.)