France-Congo Open Thread, and Game-Watching Tips

Stream is working great!

this is completely off topic for the game, but I happened upon this site and it has all sorts of videos and les nouveaux maillots rouges.

http://www.aucoeurdesbleus.fr/

Excellent, Kyle! I was going to do a post on the new maillots today.

My stream is working too. Happy, happy!!

aussi il y a un lien en français si vous voulez…

mms://livestream.eurosport.com/nogeo/63424.wsx

le lien marche très bien avec le windows media player

If Cisse hadn’t dyed his beard, I wouldn’t recognize him with black hair.

oh wow, Boum Boum is captain. Lyon affect in light speed.

Excellent. I love listening to French commentary.

Anybody else feel like this game’s being played through molasses? Everybody’s so afraid of making a mistake.

I was just thinking that. If anything they should be playing balls to the walls for the chance for an A call up next time.

I’m a bit underwhelmed so far. What do you think? Mexes looks good, though.

I’m having stream problems and having to bounce back and forth between the two feeds while listening to the French commentary. Which is funny, because there’s about a 4-5 second lag, French behind Eurosport. You don’t realize how long that is until you’re following an active sport.

I see the Eurosport site offers the option of downloading. I’m considering that, because I’d really like to be able to analyze the play a bit more. Has anybody tried it?

Wow…lights out. This should be interesting. If they had EDF supplying them clean nuclear energy, this wouldn’t happen.

for once i get a live stream to work on my mac and then the game stops

Crap. It looks like we’ve lost Nasri again.

We have? I can’t get a stream at work — please explain!

Signed,

Nervous Nelly

He went down holding his ankle again. They took him off, and the next shot he was hobbling down the side of the field in an icepack. Did not look good.

Yes, Nasri was down, replaced by Clichy I think.
You haven’ missed much really, I came after the 56th minute black-out and I didn’t see much rhythm, much flow, much cohesion, and it seems Cissé wasn’t put in good positions. It seems thing were going pretty good on the left wing and in the middle, but crosses were poor. I wonder how long these guys had been told they would be playing together. I guess Trez wouldn’t have shone (shined?)(grammar?) within this.
The Spanish public wasn’t fired up. The 19 guys from the A team were watching and probably made more noise than the rest…
But let’s not forget that African teams are always tricky to play, I’ve seen good stuff from them.
Not sure what they were hoping to learn from it; Should these A’ games serve as a laboratory to try risky things? towards the end there was some 3-5-2 going on that could be interesting for playing non-aggressive teams.

pretty boring stuff. i think j.a. boumsong was the man of the match.

That was a pretty disappointing game. (As disappointing as a France game can ever be for me, which is not too.) After seeing this, I’d definitely pick Trezeguet as my fourth striker. Cisse looked lost. Briand isn’t NT ready yet.

I did like Menez, Mexes, Clichy. Sagna maybe. Nasri didn’t look 100%, even before he got injured. Mandanda and Lloris didn’t have a lot to do. Boumsong and Givet aren’t A level, but they mostly got the job done. The midfield looked basically average.

I wish I could watch this game again. It took me the entire first half to be able to recognize the players without effort.

From what I could tell, Givet subbed in for Nasri and went in at leftback, pushing Clichy up to midfield.

Clichy could do a job at left midfield.

Thanks for all of your comments about the game being disappointing. It’s a consolation since I couldn’t watch the game myself.

Ratings from football365.

S.Mandanda : 5,5
(Lloris, 46eme : 6)
Sagna : 5,5
Boumsong (cap) : 6,5
Mexès : 6
Clichy : 5,5
A.Diarra : 6
Flamini : Non noté
(Ménez, 17eme : 4)
Rothen : 4
Nasri : 3,5
(Givet, 77eme)
Briand : 5
Cissé : 4

Cisse, Menez, and Rothen must be feeling that sting.

thats very harsh for nasri

I think that’s a little harsh for both Menez and Nasri. Menez at least fought for the ball occasionally, which is more than some players were doing. And I’d put Mexes level with Boumsong. Other than that it looks about right. But again, I was having stream problems and really wish I could see the game again.

Oh man, I didn’t even see Nasri’s score. Damn, that’s low.

Some of you guys might enjoy this while also help giving Ray a hint about Euro squad selection:

http://www.francefootball.fr/FF/VOTE_SELECTION_FRANCE_2008.php

the ratings guy has to be a psg fan

nevermind…he gave rothen a 4 too. lol.

Flamini got injured. Great, just great.