Absent Friends!

Watching Italy win the 2006 World Cup final in a game so close it went to extra time and a penalty shootout must have been painful for any Frenchman, but for three of them in particular in would have been almost unbearable.

Wherever they were, Barcelona’s Ludovic Guily and Robert Pires, late of Arsenal, bore the pain and frustration of knowing that against the streetwise Italians they could have done more, much more, than the inexperienced Franck Ribery and Florent Malouda. They should have been there and they would have been there, but for the stubbornness of France manager Raymond Domanech.

And, closer to the action, their pain would have been shared by Gregory Coupet as he sat on the substitutes’ bench – a goalkeeper believed by many (though crucially not Domanech) to be a safer bet than the ageing, unpredictable and vertically challenged Fabien Barthes.

This was a game which was lost, not merely at the point of team selection or even squad selection. The writing was on the wall from the moment the manager was appointed.