Laurent Blanc bottled his selection to guarantee defeat for France.
Incredibly, he dropped the feisty Alou Diarra, and partnered youngsters M’vila and Cabaye with the flaccid Florent Malouda.
A cardinal error because Malouda, a decent technician, lacks moral fibre. He has no desire to compete and he actually defines LMF.
Blanc compounded his Malouda blunder by disrupting his shape : he put Lille right back Mathieu Debuchy in front of Lyon right back Anthony Reveillere !
By opting for damage limitation, he lost the quarter-final before a ball was kicked.
Blanc\’s awful outfit took only 19 minutes to concede. A crossfield move reached Iniesta, who can open you up with surgical precision, his slicing pass travelled a mere eight yards inside Debuchy, who slipped, and that allowed lively left back Jordi Alba to cross beautifully to the far post for the unmarked Xabi Alonso to head home for 1-0.
Ball-watching dimwit Gael Clichy didn\’t look behind him!
He didn’t know Xabi Alonso I was there.
Malouda, watching from 21 yards away, did know that Alonso was there because he’d seen the Real Madrid midfielder run past him but didn’t react.
Malouda showed the watching world how much he cared by not running after Xabi Alonso in a Euro 2012 quarter-final.
Clearly, Malouda didn’t give a damn.
The energetic, combative Alou Diarra does care, very much, but he wasn’t on the pitch.
Pundit David James, commenting on the goal in the BBC highlights show, said, “He’s fallen asleep.”
The Republic of Ireland\’s World Cup 2002 manager wasn’t having that.
Mick McCarthy said, “He hasn\t fallen asleep, he’s been bone idle lazy.”
Substitutions made the second half scrappy but when Del Bosque brought on Pedro, a very direct winger, he soon zipped past his marker in the box, so Reveillere threw his hip and thigh across Pedro, knocking him down, a clear foul.
The classy Xabi Alonso made it 2-0 with the best penalty you’ll see in this tournament.
Bottom line for me : I’m bored with tiki-taka.
Without the genius of Messi, multiple short passing is dull.
Spain are the only team in football history who break away at pace with four razor-sharp forwards and then stop and say : There’s only four of us, we need nine, let’s stop and pass it backwards now.
When they do bring Torres on, they dont know how to play to him because they’re so habitually locked into the choreography of kingpin Xavi’s possession ballet.
OK, yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a good way of playing because it works and it’s won 19 consecutive competitive games and it keeps clean sheets.
For me, Spain peaked in 2008 when Torres was dynamic and Senna was majestic, won the 2012 World Cup on the way down, and may yet win three major tournaments in a row.
If they do that, good luck to them. We’ll all say : Spain have great players who made history.
France didn’t turn up in the first half, got a bollocking at half-time, tried for 20 minutes, then gave up.