With all the latest news back and forth with these two clubs one of disgrace and the other of sheer under performing! I think France is in more dire situation BUT in WC standards France can still do something of worth, as Italy have now suffered a crucial draw by New Zealand!

Anyone that has been keeping track of the recent drama surrounding the france national team has to agree that france is in much, much, much more dire straights than italy. After sending nicolas anelka home, the france football federation has finally done enough to force the team members to strike back. Today they refused to train in protest to anelka's sending home. This then resulted in the resignations of team director jean-louis valentin and fitness coach robert duverne. Things are certainly not looking good for this team

Both are terrible old and lazy in my opinion and will be lucky to get out of the group stage. I said this far before the teams made it to South Africa and so far I have been correct. France is probably worse off though from what I've seen they lose to much lesser opponents Italy draw more often but both have huge goal scoring problems.

With the manager and Anelka stuff coming in the news now it looks far worse for France though. I'd say they will be lucky to get out of the group

Both teams are not doing great, I can't say we should be surprised as the signs were there even before the World Cup. With the recent turn of events, there's no doubt France is hitting rock bottom - they can still go lower, losing to SA comes to mind.

I still do not fully understand the incompetence of management in refusing to change their ways, which carried down to the coach who made some rather strange choices for their squad. I'll repeat a comment I made about Italy earlier, the team is Juventus in disguise - due in large part to Lippi - and they didn't have the best of season at home. Which begs the question, if you were going to use a club team as the national team, why wouldn't you choose Roma?

I love you italy

The Guardian have a good article about how the French press are treating the French team. Every word of it is accurate




France Soir
"Clearly nothing can be expected of Les Bleus. Their achievements are shameful: France is the laughing stock of the world."

Le Parisien
"To have the worst football team at the World Cup was already unbearable. To also have the most stupid is intolerable … The mutiny at Knysna will forever remain the Waterloo of French football."

Cheerio France, don't forget your toothbrush for the flight back home. Hope you had a nice week in South Africa

I think this topic has already answered itself, with the whole france being out of the world cup and the whole fiasco that happened.... And italy is about to play and they have a good chance to pull through.... But than I thought some more, and I realized france has an outstanding team, filled with very good players, and most importantly very good young players, and players that could play the next world cup.... On the other hand we have not seen any good young talent come out from italy, and they are playing a team that was on the verge of being old last world cup, so they are even older now! And def. Not going to play next world cup.... I don't see the young talent in the italian team, and that wouldve helped if they can start playing some good young players this w. [C.] but I havent really heard of any new young amazing italian player, france has a lot of good players at a young age, and a ribery that could play next world cup, it would be his 3rd he would have the experience, gourcouf, toulalan, nasri, gouvou, benzema, lloris, evra, clichy, abidal, gignac, malouda, sagna, dyaby, mexes, and more can play next world cup so all they need is a good coach that can pull them together and they have the talent on the other hand italy is missing the young talent

Like what I said in the beginning, Italy can't score. France are horrible in the defence, and everything has not change one single bit. Italy can't score to save their ass. A world champions that went home in the first round

In the end, France was worse than Italy.... But only just! It's a hard thing to take when you come to the end of an era and you're not prepared for the transition. Next 4 years will see some radical shake-ups in both countries

In all reality neither of these teams were going to win anything this year. The Italians going out in their last game was a surprise. But all of the cheating that's gone on in the lead up to the french qualifying and in the hilarious Italian flops in the group stage showed us that the talent in both sides was few and far between

Juno the prophet! This topic is 2 weeks old, before the WC had even begun. Pretty impressive foresight Juno. The World Champion and the vice-World Champion are probably the 2 worst teams in this WC. Unbelievable

Debate settled. Both teams need to start from scratch and especially Italy, needs to install youths into the system.
It'd be interesting to see how Prandelli manages

Might want to add a few more teams to this list after some recent results