Weakened France are still quite a proposition

SOCCER: Irish supporters may have grown used to having their optimism trampled into the mud down the years but, let's face it, like Premiership footballers and houses of ill-repute, they always come back for more.

In the circumstances then it's hardly surprising with a steady stream of bad news emerging from the French camp over the past few weeks expectations here have been steadily rising ahead of Saturday's game in Paris. Back in Frankfurt late last year the only thing everybody, Brian Kerr included, agreed on was this World Cup qualification group was a race for second place.

Since then there isn't much by way of bad luck you could have dreamt up that hasn't befallen the French and, especially, new coach Raymond Domenech.

As if half of the victorious teams of 1998 and 2000 deciding to call it a day wasn't enough, Patrick Vieira's harsh second booking in Torshavn against the Faroe Islands has deprived them of their most commanding midfield presence, while injuries to Benoit Pedretti and now David Trezeguet have further weakened a panel already unrecognisable from the one Kerr expected to face when the fixture list was hammered out 10 months ago.

For all his troubles Domenech still has plenty of talent available to him, even in his most dramatically overhauled area of the field, defence, where the likes of Monaco trio Patrice Evra, Gael Givet and Sebastien Squillaci have shown at club level they can mix it with Europe's very best strikers. They did, after all, help their club to the final of the Champions League last season.

Between them, however, the three have just nine caps, six of which are accounted for by the fact they all started the qualifiers against Israel and the Faroe Islands. Domenech may have overstated things and upset some of those he must now rely upon to perform strongly when he observed after the second of those games that he was obliged to "rummage through the cupboards" for international players but the inexperience of many of the new crop was evident last month when the French were distinctly unimpressive in both outings.

The coach himself, of course, is only learning the ropes at this level and though respected for his work in developing many of the country's senior internationals while he was under-21 coach he is dogged by doubts about his ability to deliver, not least because, in 11 years with the "Espoirs" he never actually won anything. The closest he came was the European Championship a couple of years ago in Switzerland where, though much the better team, the French were beaten in the final by the Czech Republic for whom Petr Cech was inspired.

To judge by his prediction that the generation he is working with will be quickly overtaken by the one behind, it would seem Domenech would prefer to be working with the group he had with him in Switzerland, but he readily concedes he may not have anything like the time required to bring those players into the senior set-up.

Disputes with established stars like Robert Pires have served to undermine him. However, last-minute calls to Zinedine Zidane, Lilian Thuram and Claude Makelele to make themselves available again just before he named his squad for Saturday's game, and the one against Cyprus on Wednesday, was a move generally well received by the French media. They credited him with having done all he could in the circumstances but it can not have done a huge amount for the confidence of those he was clearly seeking to replace.

In their continuing absence, it seems, the French midfield will be built around the defensive presence of Olivier Dacourt, the former Leeds player who is with Roma, while Ludovic Giuly, the exciting 28-year-old now with Barcelona will provide the attacking impetus from wide on the right - which hardly seems like scraping the barrel - but it is far from clear who will complete the line-up across the centre.

Without either Trezeguet or Louis Saha it also remains to be seen who Domenech will ask to partner Thierry Henry up front, but none of the others available to him has made a particularly inspired start to the season.

Henry, of course, has the capacity to take the Irish central defence apart by himself. But the Arsenal striker has been struggling with his international form since long before the European Championship and having scored just two goals in his last 10 internationals there is a raging debate about why neither Domenech nor his predecessor, Jacques Santini, have got the best out of him.

Certainly his influence on Saturday's game would appear to be more a matter of his performance than the ability of Kerr's defenders to contain him and there should be enough talent in the side that plays behind him to make life very uncomfortable for the visitors.

The home side will still start as favourites but just about everything that has happened since the start of the summer, however, seems to suggest the Irish can go to the St Denis with a realistic hope of securing a result. The fact the French have lost just one competitive game at home - to Russia - in the last 11 years, while Ireland haven't beaten anybody of serious quality in a competitive fixture away from home in a lot longer than that, and the fact Kerr looked more than happy in Basel to take a point from a far less formidable Swiss team all suggest the best they can hope for would be a draw.

For those amongst the expected 25,000 Irish supporters who made the trips to Moscow or Basel in the last qualifying campaign that would be more than enough to prompt a celebration.