[midknight]

I'm not trying to play down your qualification. I'm just wondering...I mean its not like if Cyprus was playing bunker defense...

[ilv2]

not really. cisse had a bucket of golden opportunities that he somehow screwed up. On another day, or perhaps with another striker, they would've been converted.

[guignol]

it doesn't bother me because:

1) 4 is already knockin' 'em in pretty well...

2) the difference between 4-0 and 8-0 was more than a little bit luck...

3) the players kept fighting like devils for the 5th even after they knew it wasn't needed.

[Metropolitan]

Celebrating qualification after a 4-0 victory is not something I'll complain about.

[sl7vk]

Originally Posted by midknight

I'm not trying to play down your qualification. I'm just wondering...I mean its not like if Cyprus was playing bunker defense...

I understand what your saying but...... Nothing can take me off of the high that going to Germany has created. I don't care about anything, knowing that we can book our tickets.
What would Germany have been without France?

[Nanbawan]

I wish we scored the fifth, so that the Swiss wouldn't think they handed us the qualification.

[Metropolitan]

Originally Posted by Nanbawan

I wish we scored the fifth, so that the Swiss wouldn't think they handed us the qualification.

There has been about 25 minutes in the 2nd HT when the team wasn't playing at 100%. I'm pretty sure that in case Switzerland had scored it wouldn't have been the case and we would have scored 5th.

No one believed it before Cyprus, but actually we ended with the best goal average of the group...

[Ballon d'or]

Yes i am a bit worried, cause despite the many chances we got, against a team that didn't close itself up, our forwards or shall i say Cissé haven't converted them into goals...and that isn't good, cause this will stick into the player's mind, the fact that they can't count on him.

What worries me the most was how we often were dominated in the middle...against Cyprus at home. Now that is worrying.
Had it been Brazil, Holland or Argentina we would have bitten the dust.

[midknight]

Originally Posted by sl7vk

I understand what your saying but...... Nothing can take me off of the high that going to Germany has created. I don't care about anything, knowing that we can book our tickets.
What would Germany have been without France?

same as Italy and the USA

[midknight]

Originally Posted by Ballon d'or

Yes i am a bit worried, cause despite the many chances we got, against a team that didn't close itself up, our forwards or shall i say Cissé haven't converted them into goals...and that isn't good, cause this will stick into the player's mind, the fact that they can't count on him.

What worries me the most was how we often were dominated in the middle...against Cyprus at home. Now that is worrying.
Had it been Brazil, Holland or Argentina we would have bitten the dust.

Finally.

What bothers me most about the French when it comes to talking about their national team is how little people actually put into the analysis of the matches. For most a simple slogan suffices...in Zidane we trust...

Everyone became all optimistic after the ivory coast match, but few actually mentioned that Ivory Coast conspired not to score at least two goals in the last 20 minutes of the game, that the French defense virtually gave to them.

Against the Faroes, no one seemed to realise how often the French defenders lost the aerial battles and how easily a simple high defense strategy put the Franch attack into offside on almost every occasion.

Against Ireland, no one seemed to recognise that the only thing that separated the 2 teams was a moment of individual brilliance from Henry.

I won't talk about Switzerland.

The domination in the middle from the Cyprus game was flagrant.

As far as I'm concerned, the best matches played by the French National Team (the whole squad) was the Friendly against Sweden, and the tie in Ireland. My point is they had an objective in mind before the match and didn't achieve it, and from what i heard, Switzerland could have scored that goal anytime in the last 20 minutes...I found particularly worrying the spell between the half time whistle and the fourth goal when the team seemed to run out entirely of ideas. Cisses misses were unfortunate and one would hope that the bad luck that saw trezeguet and henry both out with injuries would never return, but i find the failure to get that fifth goal reminding of the fact that the French team, although it has gained talent wise and experience wise with the return of the old guard, still lacks the killer instinct that it had even as recently as the Santini era.
Before the return of the old guard, one thought that it was a question of self confidence, like Spain always have. Now I'm not that sure that it has anything to do with that.