Raymond Domenech Opens Up......
Still remember Les Misérables 2010? France's WC campaign was remembered for a lot of things but the man in the center of it all, Raymond Domenech has published a memoir about his life at the helm of the national team which includes his account of the now infamous campaign.
France Football Weekly has translated a few parts where he discusses some of the players: Anelka, Henry, Ribery, Gourcuff, Malouda and Nasri
*This appears distorted if you expand the cut in the main page.
My poor bb . That year did a lot of damage to his psyche tbh
Also an excellent section is where he discusses the shift in values in French football and shades Nasri (this putain rn)
On the generation gap:
Raymond Domenech calls them “the children of the Bosman generation”. It wasn’t yet a problem while Zinedine Zidane was playing at Bordeaux and making his debut for France. At the time, the former playmaker “earned less than a young player today of 18, whose club wants to cancel his contract”. That’s when “the system exploded”, laments the ex-manager of les Bleus. Example: Domenech waited until the last year of his contract at Bordeaux for the highest salary of his playing career: 50,000 francs per month. Before he was 20, Benzema was on 250,000 euros. “These total changes of status and of earnings are inevitably game-changers, where it is more difficult to put in the same effort for others”, continues the manager. “Karim is a good example of this vertigo and of its effects.”
For Domenech, this system where “the reward comes before the progress and the recognition” has contributed to the “generation gap”, which became bigger between 2006 and 2008. On the subject of the new generation, he is highly critical: “The way that the older players used to serve as mentors, their importance as role models, the values that they were able to represent, that has been destroyed”. With time, the 1998 World champions and 2000 European champions have become, “for the younger players, just boring old people”. Lilian Thuram got expressed his upset about this to Domenech during Euro 2008. Choosing not to take part in the final group match against Italy, he told him: “this team has some little shits, coach, listen up, some little shits”. In telling us in the book’s epilogue that “Samir Nasri symbolises the fall of these players, who only think about themselves”, Domenech tells us where we should be looking.
The former France manager does not hold back talking about the Manchester City player, whom Didier Deschamps has not yet selected for France. “He has a little intelligence, which is why I am less forgiving”, he explains. “Despite his talent and his times for 100 metres, he epitomises what was lacking in this Euro 2012. I didn’t pick him in 2010 because he had caused me the same problems two years earlier. He always manages to hit the group where it hurts, and to then make the problems worse rather than trying to heal them. He brings absolutely nothing to the collective.” In terms of control of the group, he actually confirms that it was “much worse” during Euro 2008 than during the 2010 World Cup. “In 2010 there was the episode with the bus, but in 2008 all the troublemakers were together”. However, he doesn’t want to give up on the new generation, “these big kids lost in their fragile psyches”.
Le Sauce Also he admitted some of his mistakes but I did not include that paragraph. Read it at the source. TYFYT
