France on a Lighter Note: The Locker Room

What happens to their boots? And yes the post match shower slide show would be a good follow up Laurie.

Yeah, I noticed Benzema was the only one to have his boots there.

Side note – his shoes are all monogrammed with “Benz 10.”

OK, I think these are minor details but:
I don’t like the new lettering on the jerseys, especially the “N” which looks like an inverted “U”
And my other beef, the “all-blue” kit never seemed to give us much luck. We did well in WC 06 after ditching it in favor of the 3 colors, or the all-white that was so nice.

I loved that all-white.

I would like to know do the people from France really care about this team or Football and sports in general, don’t have a following like it does in North America? I would’ve thought that there would be alot more comments and discussion from the fans of Les Bleus. It took me many searches on Google until I’ve found this forum.

I’m sure the French press is ripping Domenech a new one right now. My assumption is there is too much disgust with the draw at this present time for most people to even post.

Interestingly, though, this blog (France only) got over 6000 pageviews yesterday.

@Foreverzidane

I’d assume most French people would be reading French language sites.

@ mr lun : I did think of that, as I’m somewhat getting better with my french language which I absolutely ADORE! Still I couldn’t find too much coverage from the pages fed to us in North America.
Thanks for the responses.

You’re right mr lun…they are probably checking out l’Equipe’s site.

http://www.fff.fr/euro2008/actualite/actubleus_euro2008/diaporamas_euro2008/446810.shtml

Les Bleus played in a friendly with a local team and beat them 7-0.
pictures of Viera and Henry which we hope it means they’re fit enough to play.

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/trezeguet%2Bdomenech/video/x1cmmc_impossible-is-impossible-part2_fun

I thought this was a lighter note as well.

Foreverzidane:
To give you an idea, France-Portugal TV broadcast during the world cup got 22 million viewers. That’s the biggest ratings ever.
And on a popular french website like football365.fr, there was 440 comments for a review of France-Romania.

Merci Set, unfortunately here in the backwards thinking Toronto, Ontario Canada, there are a lot of haters of the French in general mainly because of the history and always living in the past. I feel left out here with not that many Les Bleus supporters and have to put up with many ignorant comments everywhere. Specially all the dirty looks they give me when I’m wearing the Jersey. The teams with major popularity here in Canada are the English, Italians and the Portuguese/Brazil but it is so heart warming to know that Les Bleus have such growing popularity around the world. The brilliance of Zidane in the game against Brazil will live on in my mind.

De rien
I suppose the French team gained most of its popularity during the 98 world cup and thanks to Zizou. But now he’s gone and we have so much trouble scoring, I doubt we’re conquering many hearts. Nobody doubts the quality of the players but they’ll have to shine a bit more than during the Romania game. I’m especially looking at Ribery and Benzema.

“Live together, thrill together” is the team’s motto for this competition. Well the only thrills I got since last world cup were our victory against Italy and Gomis’ beautiful goals. The rest is duuuuuullllllllllll, so dull. Draws, losses, wins thanks to penalty kicks.. Come on. I know this news was to lighten the mood but it had to get out of me.

I’m crossing my fingers, touching wood and sacrificing Nutella in my belly hoping we get a great game against Netherlands. At least some goals, please. Even just one, for us

Sacrificing Nutella? Wow. This IS serious!

ForeverZidane, welcome to this site. You’re among friends.

There are other good sites on les Bleus for sure, but I think we’ve developed a fun and unique community here. The readers and commenters tend to be thoughtful, knowledgeable, fun, and even relatively polite.

And not only that, we’re here year-round. We won’t go away when the Euros are over.

Actually for me personally the thrilling game they played back in 1982 semis with the greats such as Platini and Tigana, Joel Bats and others that I can’t remember right now, got me hooked onto this team till now. I am 200% certain that the make up for Les Bleus will be different on Friday, as many of you have come to the defense of Toulalan, I think that a defensive Midfielder still could provide much needed offense and be more dynamic in seeing the playing field and better choose his distribution of the balls. Thanks Laurie for the welcome.

There are definitely great commenters on this site.

About French people visiting the site and not commenting – not everyone in France speaks English like Set. People are shy and reluctant to comment if they don’t completely understand everything. When I post comments on forums in French, it is quite common for the someone to immediately follow-up my comment with a single punctuation mark:

?

Also, ForeverZ, it’s a little inaccurate to measure the Euro interest only through Internet traffic. Remember that France uses that top-notch communication technology called “le Café”, where opinions fly back and forth at light-speed. But I’m afraid they haven’t designed a counter to keep track of the total number of “hits”. Hehe.

By the way, you’ll like it here. I’m a French guy, but I’m absolutely prefering this place to all others, by far. There’s a unique atmosphere, a feminine flair which I think is great – I was so tired of stuff like “Dude, this guy sucks!” “No, you’re an idiot, he rocks! If he had played he would have scored 14 goals!” before I came here. And it really is a thrill to discover that not only French people have respect and love for this team, in good and tough times (like in 82, with Battiston, Bossis, Giresse, Trésor, Rocheteau to add a few to your list).

Like Doumé, I enjoy the fact people here use arguments pretty often, and generally know how to write. And most importantly, the athmosphere is very friendly.
What I also like is that because we come from different places, we have different sources of information, different influences, which gives particular point of views that are interesting to read.
But of course, I come here for the news, usually light toned but well thought. Probably the feminine flair, like Doumé says

With the Oranje adopting an attacking attitude, I think Les Bleus will have the space to operate better.

I think Domenech is toying with the idea of putting Ribery just behind the striker, while Govou to start on the right and Malouda retained on the left.

But this means France will play with only one striker, and that could be Henry.

If Domenech keeps his faith on a two-man strikeforce, Pat Vieira will be given the licence to support the attack, with Ribery on the right and Malouda on the left, while Toulalan warm the bench.

I don’t think Evra should make the line-up. Abidal has more experience and physically-equipped.

It will be interesting to watch how Orlando Engelaar acquit himself against Makelele and Vieira in the middle of the park and whether Sagnol can neutralise Sneijder.

Thanks Doume how could I forget Tresor and Rocheteau?
What a stacked team that 1982 was, and full of speed.
Speaking of speed we should see a fast one on Friday we hope.
By the way I also support the Gunners and I think that Wenger
will be the next coach of the Les Bleus? Now how’s that for
a hot topic?