Blanc slate as French start anew

PEOPLE MAY be treating him with the sort of sympathy due to a man on his way to the guillotine, the new France manager Laurent Blanc joked on his first day in the job yesterday, but he felt not trepidation but pride. And as if to underlined a new order was asserting itself, he filled his maiden address with words that haven’t been heard lately at the headquarters of the beleaguered football federation in Paris: discipline, unity, humility, pleasure.

“I am very proud to be here as coach of the France team,” the former captain said. “For me, the France team is above everything . . . I had other challenges available to me, but this one with the French team most attracted me. The recent difficult events never called that into question.”

Those recent events must make the view from Blanc’s new office grim, however, and he made no attempt to feign indifference to the South African fiasco.

“I clearly cannot act as if nothing happened in South Africa,” he said. “I followed these events with great sadness. I was disappointed by the performance and disgusted by certain behaviour.”

Does he feel strongly enough to leave the alleged ringleaders of the player strike – Patrice Evra, Franck Ribéry and Éric Abidal among them – out of his squad?

“My task is to retain the best players, in their best positions, and to create the best team possible,” Blanc explained. “It will be up to them to show proof, unambiguous proof, of hard work and discipline.

“We could start anew, with a clean slate, leaving everyone behind,” he told a press conference attended by over 100 journalists.

“You would be happy for a while but in the long run it wouldn’t be enough for any of us. I am here to win and this is what I will be judged on.”

Press conferences with Blanc’s predecessor, Raymond Domenech, had become fraught and tense, the mutual loathing between coach and French sports press having all but made their relationship dysfunctional.

Blanc – popular, self-deprecating and so far untainted by bad results – has changed the dynamic instantly. He pointedly spoke of opening the team up to the press and the society around them, of players’ rights and responsibility, of restoring pride in the jersey.

“I don’t envisage a team living behind closed doors, cut off from the world,” Blanc said. “I think football has to open itself up.”

Asked whether he had spoken to Domenech since taking up the post, he gave a firm, “Non.”

Looking relaxed, if a little startled by the scale of the media interest that now surrounds him, Blanc wasn’t above the dark humour that has comforted many French football fans through recent weeks.

“After the World Cup, a new coach should be able to lean on a nucleus in the squad,” he remarked with a grin, “but there is no nucleus. It’s not even a melon pip.”

He hopes to sit down with players and staff over the coming weeks to discuss how the recovery can begin. He has high hopes for France’s young players, but has seen too many of them leave good French clubs “for the good of their wallet” and end up languishing on the fringes of big squads at overseas clubs. He hopes to change the mentality.

The 44-year-old Blanc’s first game is an away friendly against Norway on August 11th, followed by a Euro 2012 home qualifier against Belarus on September 3rd. One of his first tasks will be to manage expectations in a country that had come to see international trophies as its right after the successes of 1998 and 2000.

“People will have to show a certain amount of humility,” Blanc said. “At one time our national team could say ‘We’re going to the European Championship to win it’ . . . But when the Fifa rankings come out after the World Cup, I don’t think we’ll even be in the top 10.

“We will need to be a bit humble.”