Thierry Henry loves to get cute in front of goal. All flashes and finesse touches. And today he scored a stunning goal just that way. Unfortunately, it was into his own goal as he stuck out an instinctive foot to a Daniel De Rossi free kick and deflected it neatly into the right hand corner. From the replay it was evident that the ball would have gone wide if Henry had not tried to intervene.
But France was going to have to do some heavy lifting as their play maker Franck Ribery was carted off with what appeared to be a knee ligament tear. Samir Nasri was brought in. It got worse as Eric Abidal barged into Luca Toni like a drunken sailor and brought him down in the box. Andrea Pirlo banged home the PK. And then Domenech substituted Nasri with Jean Alain Boumsong. What? You just substituted your creative force for another enforcer? Where would your attack flow through? It must have encouraged the Italians too as they put their foot on the accelerator and Luca Toni proceeded to miss three more opportunities spraying the ball just wide each time. How many chances has this man had? If Toni was a stock with his P/E index, it would be a sure sell.
Benzema provided some uplifting moments and a neat curler that Gigi Buffon had to extend to parry away late in the game stands out. But highlights were few and far in between for the Les Bleus fans and once the news that the overmatched Romanians were down a goal early in the second half, they looked deflated. But then the camera panned onto the most gorgeous woman in the Euro and it reminded everyone why we play soccer.
It was a cruel match and France did not deserve to be bundled out of the tournament this way but when you look at the overarching theme of their campaign you see a manager who played it too safe, sacrificing innovation and talent and promoting the status quo with players like Sagnol, Thuram, Malouda, and Toulalan. It is the oldest team and they looked creaky.