It is not the moment for the French to start becoming anxious, but the pressure is there. South Korea have the potential to frustrate: they have three points already and may have in their minds that a draw against France would be sufficient to qualify for the next round.
Against Switzerland I saw a France team that was short of imagination and had too little balance. One of the main faults was connection between the departments, the different lines of the team, between defence and midfield, between midfield and attack. They looked too stretched out; the defence too deep if the intention was to keep the forward line aggressive and high up the field. They need to take a decision about how to correct that — maybe to defend from a bit further forward.
With the quality of the players available, the status of the clubs they play for, it is right to expect something more than France showed last Tuesday. I imagine that for English viewers, who know how Arsenal have played over the past few years, the Thierry Henry of Les Bleus must have looked a different Henry from the one they recognise. My view is that France would get the best out of Henry if they played him in a system more like the one Arsenal have used for most of his career there.
Arsenal’s game is quicker than France’s and in the system we developed under Arsène Wenger, we directed our game towards Henry. Most of the time, it was in a 4-4-2 formation. France have not played 4-4-2 in the lead-up to this World Cup and they didn’t against Switzerland. I know Arsenal changed their system in the later rounds of the Champions League to one that had Henry on his own leading the attack, but for France, Henry needs a support striker with him.
He and David Trezeguet go back a long way — they were at Monaco together in their teens — but with France they have not been given that much time to express themselves as a duo. Louis Saha alongside Henry could also work.
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As for Patrick Vieira, I have faith that he will come good. I have known him for 12 years and this has not been one of his easiest years. Last summer he left Arsenal, which had been such an important part of his life, his home. He went to Juventus, full of ambition, and won the Italian league, but that club has problems and it may not so far have been such a good move. But Patrick is a warrior. He loves competition. He’ll be back.
France need a strong Vieira. I don’t like to make too many comparisons between the squad that won the World Cup in 1998 and the European Championship in 2000, but in 1998 we had several natural leaders. That’s not to say there isn’t strong leadership now, but in Didier Deschamps, Marcel Desailly, Laurent Blanc, Emmanuel Petit, Christian Karembeu and Youri Djorkaeff, you had real chiefs, to whom leadership came instinctively. France miss a bit of that.
And they count on a lot from their captain. We have not yet seen the great Zinedine Zidane in this tournament. But we have still seen enough to remind us how dangerous he is and how important to France. Of course he is a bit older now, but he can still influence matches with one move, one pass — and don’t forget how strong he is with set pieces.
From what I hear, the mood is good in the squad. Obviously I would like to be there with them, but for about the past year and a half I have realised that for some reason I am out of the thoughts of Raymond Domenech, the head coach. Not that he called me to say why. Domenech is a bit of a mystery to me.
There is pressure on him already, but I don’t think it is right to compare the difficulties of this French side in their opening match with the problems we had at Euro 2004 or at the World Cup in Korea in 2002. About that campaign I cannot speak as a direct witness because I had been injured a few weeks before the tournament and could not go. But I know that a lot of what happened — France did not win a match or even score a goal — can be put down to the lack of freshness in a squad that had come almost straight out of a long club season. Partly the same had been true in Portugal, when France went out in the quarter-finals. You need to be fielding teams that are 100% fresh at these competitions.
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Spain looked fresh in the first week. It is the country I will be calling home next season now that I have joined Villarreal, and I sense that among the Spain players there is a new mentality, a different attitude than the one they have taken to other tournaments. We know the Spanish can reach the highest level of club football — Barcelona hold the Champions League, Sevilla the Uefa Cup — and this is a national team ready to be reborn, to work effectively as a team.
Robert Pires has won 79 caps for France and was in the squad that won the World Cup in 1998.