“Le Caviar,” to be Sure!

February 11th, 2008 | by: Laurie |

I wanted to embed the video of the lovely Willy Sagnol to Benzema to crossbar to Henry exchange at the end of the game, but I’m having problems with the embed code, so click on this link to watch it.

While I was doing a quick google search about the title to be absolutely certain that “caviar” is masculine, I discovered that caviar is also halal. (Similar to the Jewish “kosher.”) Just fyi. In case you were wondering.

Doumé gave us this clip, along with the word “caviar,” slang for a beautiful, perfect pass. (French football 101. Thank you, Doumé.) I saw the video clip, but didn’t really appreciate it until I was able to watch it occur last night in the run of play. It is SO good to have Willy Sagnol back! Even if he’s not 100% fit, he always seems to put himself in a position to have the time to look up and decide where a pass is going. You don’t realize how rare that is till you don’t have it for a few months. Welcome back, Willy.

Now that I’ve watched the whole game, I’m confused. As a whole, France played well. They controlled the ball fairly well throughout the whole game. Spain is a good, up and coming team, but they didn’t outclass France by any stretch of the imagination. France just didn’t drive forward enough to get enough chances on goal. They didn’t play with any sense of urgency until after Spain scored, when they came alive. Why is that?

Part of it was the subs, I think. Hatem Ben Arfa brought in a whole different energy level compared to Patrick Vieira, and Ben Arfa combined with Benzema is frequently magical. They just didn’t have enough time to create that magic. Question: Did Raymond put Ben Arfa in at right mid? It didn’t occur to me to pay attention till afterwards, but now I’m having memory visions of him coming up the right flank. And this would have freed up Lassana Diarra to go back to central mid, where he seems to be more comfortable. Maybe that had something to do with the energy surge? Can Ben Arfa play both right and left? It would be nice to have another switch hitter like Ribéry.

I’m not writing off Lassana Diarra just yet. He didn’t have a great game, but he was playing out of position. (I think. Where is he playing at Pompey? I’ve barely been paying attention to EPL this year.) It worked to play him out of position at rightback in the Italy game. This? Not so much.

A couple more interesting videos. First, I hadn’t seen the actual booing of the Marseillaise till Saturday night. Wow. Much more intense than I expected. What is it the commentator says? Stupid, ridiculous and disrespectful? (Going by memory here.) I’ll ditto that.

Second is the goal. It looks like Escudé dove for the ball and ended up on his butt, which left Capdevila unmarked for the rebound. (? Is that what everybody else sees?) But there were several Spain players criminally unmarked on the play, so I don’t want to blame Escudé.

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talia

Hi Laurie,
I hadn’t seen the booing of the French Anthem either. I only heard about it when it happened so I thought I would be desensitized to it but I was wrong. Wow…that was really sickening & stomach turning. There are no words to describe how disturbing that was. Moving along to more pleasant matters…..I belong to the only English language Zidane fans community out there and we know all about your fondness for that unforgettable Frenchman so our moderator has asked me to personally invite you to join our community. We would love to have you on board and welcome any contributions you make. Here’s the link and hope you like it and hope to see you there!
http://community.livejournal.com/zidanefans

Best Regards, Talia
Jean-Michel

Yeah, Ben Arfa was on the right flank. I think Toulalan switched to a more defensive midfield role when Viera was substituted although he got up to attack plenty as time was running out. Willy is the best passer on the team. Welcome back Willy.
http://france.worldcupblog.org Laurie

So Talia, basically what you’re offering me is a place where my fascination with all things Zidane will NOT be considered odd?

You know what they call this, don’t you? They call this “enabling.”

Thanks much for the invite! I went in and signed on. Not sure how much time I’ll have to participate — life’s been a bit crazy lately — but I will certainly go read what you all have to say. (And of course I’ll borrow any fascinating info you give me for this page.)

Thanks for thinking of me!
http://www.wickeddeflection.com/ 433

Lassana Diarra is playing central midfield for Portsmouth. I did watch the most recent Portsmouth game – he scored the goal in a 1-0 victory. Overall, he looked pretty good, like he usually does. I haven’t downloaded the France game from the link Kyle provided. I did check out a lot of the clips on Daily Motion, and, from what I could see, France looked stronger than Spain, but France always looks like the better team to me.
http://france.worldcupblog.org Laurie

Thanks, Jeff (433). I saw that about Lassana’s goal and actually have a post ready to go up later today.
Doumé

Laurie,
Sorry for not putting the gender of the word “caviar”! Most likely, if the word doesn’t end in “E” it would be masculine. The reverse isn’t true.
We used it a lot in the 80s-90s for a ball that leads to an easy score, who knows now?
So good to see our friend Willy back, now Ribéry needs to get well. IMO he might have made the difference if he had been there. But heck, it’s a friendly anyway.

Henry, Domenech and Vieira all talked about “reinsuring defeat” because they thought they had good things despite the result. And yes it’s true. However, Malouda, whom I didn’t know was good with words, had this well-turned little comment:
“Yes, but I prefer frightening victories to reinsuring defeats”
http://france.worldcupblog.org Laurie

Most likely, if the word doesn’t end in “E” it would be masculine. The reverse isn’t true.

My brain knows this. My fingers would never type a French noun without double-checking. And now I know about the halal thing, so everybody wins.

LOVE the Malouda quote!
Seb

Hey Laurie,

It’s been a while, though I’m happy to see the blog continues to be one of the best reads on the NT. I hope that you keep up the good work!

A note on Lassana Diarra. Diarra’s been doing well at Portsmouth in central midfield as mentioned in one of the comments above, but my concern with him is that he’s a very limited option at the moment. What I mean is, he is very versatile in terms of position (right back, defensive midfield, central midfield, left/right midfield, who knows, even center back), but he is very limited in terms of what skills he has right now. He’s full of energy, but his distribution/vision has to be vastly improved. Also, to make use of a clichéd expression, the guy can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a shot or cross. Additionally his attitude, compared to when he came up initially while at Chelsea, is a lot less humble and a lot more whiny (referring to his transfer saga at Arsenal).

Oh, and a brief comment on Ben Arfa, if I may. Ben Arfa can play on the right, but his preferred position, I think, remains the “second striker” Bergkamp/Gianfranco Zola type attacker (it’s what he played when bursting on the scene back at the U-17 EC), which I actually believe could work with him behind Henry. We’ll have to see, though, but Hatem will definitely be a starter on Les Bleus one day. Perhaps very, very soon.
sandrahn

Laurie, I’ve been a member of talia’s zidane group (it started soon after the 2006 wc) almost from the beginning. You should check out the older postings, great stuff. It’s been kind of quiet lately, but it’s still running. It’s a haven for me since my French is limited and it’s the only English-language zizou site I know of.

As to the game….. I’m genuinely concerned, as we head closer to Euro 2008. Domenech is not in the same position as Capello is with the England squad. Domenech has an embarrassment of riches to choose from. Stop for a moment and look at those players, it’s an amazing squad. There’s just no excuse for not winning that game v. Spain. Spain were very very poor. This constant reliance on Vieira, Thuram and Makelele is really frustrating. I don’t slate Domenech as much as others do but frankly I have little belief that he can make this incredibly talented group of players into the organized, effective, brilliant team I know they can be.
Jean-Michel

Seems like he’s married to 4-4-2 system as well. He experiments with players, why not with a different formation? It has not exactly been a goal scoring system that we’d all hope it would be and no one seems to be really thriving in it either. There is more than enough to be concerned about.
http://france.worldcupblog.org Laurie

I read something before the Ukraine game that said France lose only when they play 4-4-2. (Scotland, Argentina, Scotland, Spain.) Of course, they’ve won in 4-4-2 also, but…

I personally love 4-4-2 because I want to be able to see Benzema and Anelka on the field at some point. (Seriously, I love the France strikers and hate the thought of not having two on the field.) But if that’s what it takes to win…
http://ghana.worldcupblog.org Inara

It’s so easy to talk about changing formation and making pretty diagrams, but it’s not that simple. I’m sure Domenech and his staff would love to be able to switch between various formations, but you need the right players, and most importantly, you need time to implement these changes. Right now everyone is concerned about results in the short term, so it’s not like Domenech has a lot of opportunities to change tactics without losing a couple of games. I mean, he lost a friendly against Spain and look at all the criticism he got. Imagine if that streak extended to three or four games – which is expected if you’re going to change from the tried and tested 4-4-2 only a few months before the Euros. From his POV, it makes sense to wait until after the summer for new tactics.

Sure, we’d love to see fewer defensively minded players out there, but when you look at the turnover of the squad since the World Cup and how there are so many newer (and younger) players in the squad, perhaps he feels that too many changes can be just as damaging as none at all.

And keep in mind that Zizou was a playmaker in a 4-4-2. It would be great to see Nasri with a bigger role in the squad, but he’s having a tough time at OM right now with a so-so season and with injuries, and don’t forget he’s only 19 and just got his first taste of CL football this year. Asking him to take on Zizou’s duties on the NT for Euro 2008 is asking a bit much IMO.
Jean-Michel

Are you saying he doesn’t have the right players? He’s got some of the biggest names in football now. Yes some are young but someone’s gotta step up. Everyone should be concerned about results right now. He’s had almost two years since the world cup to tweak things. Zizou could have been a playmaker from a left back position if need be but thats him. I think Benzema can play a variety of positions in an attacking capacity. He definitely needs to be on the field.
talia

See Laurie? we’re not a bad bunch of gals…Sandra is one of the best members we have!! it has been slow but things are picking up again so you should stop by…although right now an inordinate amount of drooling is going on because of some locker room shots of Zizou’ bare behind in the most recent journal entry but we’re usually more respectful. He has a great ass though….