Who Will Get the Call for France vs. Lithuania and Austria?

March 12th, 2007 | by: Laurie | Comments Off

The list for the next two games (Lithania on the 24th and Austria on the 28th) will be unveiled this Thursday. Who will get the calls this time around?

The sélectionneur tricolore Raymond Domenech was at the Stade Gerland this weekend to check out the game between Olympique Lyonnais and Olympique de Marseille. Who was he there to see? Take your pick. Live Foot lists fourteen possibilities: Grégory Coupet, Eric Abidal, Sébastien Squilacci, Anthony Réveillère, François Clerc, Jérémy Toulalan, Florent Malouda, Sylvain Wiltord, Sydney Govou, Karim Benzema, Julien Rodriguez, Franck Ribéry, Samir Nasri, and Djibril Cissé.

OM’s nineteen-year-old attacking midfielder Samir Nasri is the only new name on this list. (Karim Benzema and Julien Rodriguez have both received call-ups previously but are still awaiting National Team playing time.) Samir has five caps with Les Espoirs, but none with the big boys. Will this be the game? We’ll find out on Thursday.

Also this weekend, Domenech underling Pierre Mankowski visited Milan to watch twenty-year-old attacking midfielder Yoann Gourcuff in the Milan-Inter match. Yoann has been getting a lot of press recently (couldn’t be because the young ladies think he’s really pretty, could it?) and has been referred to by some as one of the many “Next Zidane” players out there. Actually, if you check out his Wikipedia entry, his nickname is listed as “Petit Zizou.”

Will either of these young men, or my personal favorite uncapped hopeful Karim Benzema, get the nod to fill in the gaps left in by injuries? Or will Domenech pull something out of his hat the way he did for France-Argentina? I’ll be surprised with everybody else on Thursday.