A wave of disgust washed over France this afternoon when the national football team went down 2-1 to South Africa, crashing out of the first round of the World Cup and sealing their disgrace as the worst national team in memory.
The players who had been flown to the World Cup in the first class cabin of a new Airbus A380 are thought to be booked on a second class return journey in the back of a Boeing 737 tomorrow.
“This is a dark day in the history of France,” said the commentator on TF1 television, the main national channel, as the final whistle blue in Bloemfontein. “This is a catastrophe for French sport. The 22nd of June, 2010, will be remembered as an absolute nightmare,” he added.
The French squad and Raymond Domenech, their reviled manager, will fly home tomorrow to face the contempt of their country and an inquisition into their meltdown. President Sarkozy has ordered a top-to-bottom “audit” of the national football machine after a performance that his Government holds to be an insult to the nation’s honour. “The government has to intervene as the reputation of France is at stake in this case,” said Roselyne Bachelot, the Sports Minister, after a pep talk with the team on Monday night.
“I told the players they had tarnished the image of France. It is a morale disaster for French football. I told them they could no longer be heroes for our children,” she said. “They have destroyed the dreams of their countrymen, their friends and supporters.”
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Mr Domenech, Patrice Evra, the captain until yesterday, and the other players will be asked to explain the breakdown that manifested itself in civil war inside the squad. Sunday’s mutiny, in which they refused to train in protest against the exclusion of Nicolas Anelka, was the final straw.
The French team, which reached the final against Italy in the 2006 Cup and won it in 1998, have emerged last in the first round in South Africa. Their players, each of whom earn between five and 20 million euros a year, scored a single goal in the tournament - by Florent Malouda in the 70th minute of today’s last match.
A national poll by the BVA agency found today that the public blamed the players first, but ranked Mr Domenech and the French Football Association close behind as the cause of the South African humiliation.
The media are calling for a purge of the whole squad. Mr Domenech’s replacement, by Laurent Blanc, was announced before the finals. Other stars are expected to go, including Anelka and possibly Franck Ribery. Thierry Henry, the last playing veteran of the 1998 victory will retire. Le Figaro called today for the whole squad to be sacked. “The honour of French football can only be assured if all those involved in the tragicomedy enacted in South Africa leave the scene permanently,” its editorial said.
Roselyne Bachelot, the French Sports Minister, earlier claimed she had reduced the players to tears after she told them they were a “moral disaster” and had brought shame on the country. “They applauded me and they were crying,” Bachelot said.
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“I told the players that they are perhaps no longer heroes for our children,” she added. “It is the dreams of your partners, your friends, your supporters that you have broken. It is the image of France that you have tarnished. I said to the players that French football was confronting a disaster, not because it had lost a match, but because this disaster is a moral disaster.”
Assessing what he called “this fiasco from science fiction,” Bixente Lizarazu, a former Bleus star, said the football world must now analyse everything that had gone wrong since Domenech was reappointed manager in 2008 following France’s ejection from the Euro cup that year. “It was an error to keep him on. Everything fell apart from that moment. We have become the laughing stock of the world,” said Lizarazu, who is commentating for RTL radio from South Africa.