If It's June in an Even Year ...

I'm just back from a weekend in Montreal, on which more later, but while in the hotel I managed to steal a few minutes watching bits of some early matches of Euro 2008 (Switzerland-Czech Republic, Germany-Poland, and Croatia-Austria) - the quadrennial championship of European national soccer teams. The European Championship always falls halfway between two World Cups, and so every even year there is world-class soccer (or an approximation thereof, given how tired all the players are, following a nine-month competitive season with another month in the heat of the summer) to watch in June. Although I am one of those people who prefer club soccer to international soccer - I think Man United or Chelsea could beat any national all-star team, and for that matter the Celtics or Lakers could beat any basketball all-star team, including the American one - the latter draws more television coverage, and hence is more accessible in the U.S.

Since I began following soccer in 1994 when I lived in France, I adopted that country's soccer team along with its food and its language. France was not actually in the 1994 World Cup, having failed to qualify by somehow managing to lose to both Israel and Bulgaria at home in its final two qualifying matches, the latter in the final minutes0. But during the 1996 European Championship I was touring Southern Italy as a writer for The Berkeley Guides, watching matches in bars packed with Italian fans (Arrigo Sacchi, then coach of the Italian team, played with "very tight lines," one man explained to me), as an ultra-defensive French team made it to the semifinals. Then, of course, there was 1998, when the World Cup was played in France, and I spent the whole time in London working on a consulting project so brutal that I missed virtually every game. But I made it back to my hotel room for the last half hour of the France-Croatia semifinal, when Lilian Thuram scored the only two goals of his entire international career (over 100 matches and counting) to salvage a 2-1 win, and that weekend in McKinsey's Toronto office we photocopied the final binders and I headed straight to a bar to watch most of the final, when France stunned Brazil 3-0. In 2000 I was in California, nine hours behind Europe and working all the time (this was Ariba at the peak of the boom), and I don't think I had any TV coverage anyway, so I missed watching France come from behind to beat Italy 2-1 in the finals. Then there were the embarrassments of 2002, when I stayed up late to watch France fail to score a goal in the first round (against Senegal, Uruguay, and Denmark, if my memory serves me), and of 2004, when an aging, tired team got booted out in the quarters by Greece. By 2006, I had a DVR, so I watched most of the World Cup, suffering through the painful final against Italy and the media's maddening obsession with Zinedine Zidane, who was at best the fifth-best player on the team, after both central defenders and both defensive midfielders - all of whom were black, by the way, but one shouldn't hold that against Zidane, who is an admirable person who has spoken out against racism on many occasions, and did not cost France the final - that was David Trezeguet, who is a great player, but who missed his penalty kick. But I digress.

As always, France enters this year's European Championship as one of the favorites, which means that all of her fans are expecting her to self-destruct, either early or late. And to be aided in the process by the current coach, Raymond Domenech, who has always seemed out of his depth and has compensated by being not only illogical but vague and inscrutable. He is best known for reaching the finals of the 2006 World Cup, but under his direction France barely qualified for that event (squeaking by Ireland, Switzerland, Israel thanks to a tremendous goal by Thierry Henry in Ireland), needed to beat Togo just to get out of the group stage, and only qualified for Euro 2008 thanks to Georgia defeating Scotland in one of the last matches. On top of that, Domenech insists on starting players who have served him well in the past but are no longer good enough even to start for their club teams, for example playing Willy Sagnol at right-back despite his missing virtually the whole season due to injury and not even including Bacary Sagna in the team, even though he was voted the best right-back in the English league. Most shockingly, Domenech left off the team David Trezeguet, the second-highest scorer in the Italian league and one of the deadliest strikers in the world (and the focus of Adidas's promotional campaign), in favor of two players who don't even start for their club teams (Henry at Barcelona and Nicolas Anelka at Chelsea).

Which is a long way of getting to the point, that today France drew 0-0 with Romania, the weakest team in their group, and no one knows where the offense is going to come from. So it could be a long few weeks.