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A final warmup

June 5th, 2006 | By: Chriso | 10 Comments »

France are making their final preparations for this week’s last friendly before the World Cup.

They play China on Wednesday night in St Etienne and Raymond Domenech has been hinting to the media that the team that starts against China will be the one that starts against the Swiss.
His only major decisions are whether to put Louis Saha in ahead of Trezeguet and Franck Ribery in for Zidane, I can’t see him doing either.

Domenech told a press conference that ‘nowadays there is not much point in playing hide-and-seek with anybody’, in regard to keeping team lineups a secret. He’s right on that point, everybody knows who’ll be in the eleven for the first game so he might as well announce it and tell the opposition ‘now you come and beat us’.

I’d expect wholesale changes at halftime of the China game, just to give as many players a runout before next week’s big game.

Tags: China, France, friendly games

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Comments

By Jassy Wang | June 5th, 2006 at 9:46 pm

Franch team is a strong team,also now.Zizou and Herry are great player in the world,but their stile is dissimilar, this is why Herry played in club better than nationnal team,if the coach can deal with Zizou and Herry’s coorperation,I believe France can be the winner!

Posted from Australia

By pinaki de | June 5th, 2006 at 11:45 pm

actually zidane is saving his best for the finals. we can see that. remember what happened to him in 2002. he unnecessarily got injured against korea in a warm up match which ruined his world cup.

Posted from India

By Nirav | June 6th, 2006 at 9:11 pm

I guess Ribery will be used as a substitute only… and possibly it will b e Cisse to partner Henry

Posted from Australia

By Michael | June 7th, 2006 at 5:44 pm

What a shame about Cisse’s breaking his leg in the friendly with China. How unlucky can a guy get. The injury looks horrific.

I imagine that Giuly will get the call up now.

Posted from United States

By shuai | June 8th, 2006 at 2:05 am

Govou…wtf?
I hoped too much for Anelka.

Posted from France

By Claude | June 8th, 2006 at 2:37 am

Could and Would Giuly play? Afterall, he has success on his side…

Posted from Spain

By Michael | June 8th, 2006 at 9:43 am

Claude, you are indeed correct.

Posted from United States

By aude | June 12th, 2006 at 2:36 am

I am so pleased to see that people from australia and the US are talking of the french team in a good way. I think France has the guts to win the cup though there have been alredy quite a few surprises . It will be hard to go against the germain machine… and I don’t speak of Brazil (no need to..lol)

Posted from New Caledonia

By aude | June 12th, 2006 at 2:38 am

Just a little update right now. I am sad to see that the flag of my country (new caledonia) is not the national french flag (which is by all means the official flag).. anyway…good world cup to everyone

Posted from New Caledonia

By tapiwa | June 12th, 2006 at 10:09 am

france are a great team.they are gonna go all the way to the semi-finals.why i say so is because they would want to prove to the world that they are still a strong team,a team not to be taken for fun.I;m from zimbabwe and i’m ralling behind africa.

Posted from Zimbabwe