SPAIN 1 FRANCE 2 | U-19 EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP SEMI FINAL RESULT

So close yet so far. Spain lost with extra-time 1 - 2 against France in the UEFA U-19 European Championships semi-final being held in Lithuania. A double Spanish defensive mistake in the 105th min of extra-time allowed Frenchman Conte to get onto a ball to score what would be the eventual winner.

A shame really for Spain as they were overall the better playing team, but mistakes are paid for

SPAIN 2 FRANCE 1 | FIFA U-20 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP GROUP A GAME RESULT

Spain won 2 -1 France in its last Group A match of the FIFA U-20 World Championships in Turkey to take Top spot & wait to see which Nation to play next Tuesday. That team will be any of the third placed from Groups C, D or F which will be confirmed.




Spain put in a marvellous 60 minutes of Football & then fell in intensity & could have even lost the game. During the best moments for Spain Paco

FRANCE 0 SPAIN 1 | FINAL SCORE GROUP I WORLD CUP 2014 QUALIFIER

Objective achieved. The current World & European Champions Spain managed the three points to take the top spot of Group I from France. The final result in tonight's World Cup 2014 qualifier was 0 - 1 in favour of the Spanish Football National Team in a worked, difficult but deserved victory.Two distinct style with Spain true to its ball possession philosophy & France with tight defending

SPAIN NEW ALL RED UNIFORM AGAINST FRANCE

Thought it maybe of interest to the readers. The Spanish National Football Team will try out a "new look" uniform against France tonight in their Group I World Cup 2014 Qualifier. Well its not exactly new, the novelty is that Spain will dress with red shorts - a first in its History - which will give Spain an all Red aspect. Below is a picture of how Spain will look tonight in Paris




Strong

SFS FLASHBACKS | SPAIN 1 FRANCE 1 | VIDEO

Here is a Spanish Football Flashback to the first Group I game played in Madrid between Spain & France 5 months ago. The match ended in a 1 - 1 draw with goal from Sergio Ramos , a missed penalty from Cesc Fabregas & a mistake in the midfield by Spanish defender Juan Fran that allowed a French counter-attack that Giroud converted to equalize for France in the end of the match.






The

FRANCE vs SPAIN | POSSIBLE STARTING 11 TEAM LINE UPS

Important match for the Spanish National Football Team next Tuesday against France. The current European & World Champions need to win & get the three points to take the Top position of Group I. The first placed Nation gets a direct ticket for the 2014 World Cup competition in Brazil, while second placed has to play a "knock-out" tie with other second Group placed European Nations. This last

REAL MADRID | RAPHAEL VARANE

Been wanting to give this man space on the blog with a post for some time. RAPHAEL VARANE is a magnificent defender, top notch for REAL MADRID with an extraordinary future. The young Frenchmen came 100% backed by Zidane who spotted him in French Football & then spoke wonders of the 17 year old player when in Lens. Although his inner circle believed to was too early to make the jump to a Club with

France fire Blancs as Spanish sail on to the semis

France are the latest team heading for the airport, well beaten 2-0 by Vicente del Bosque's men in Donetsk this evening.

Spain did not play fluently and a fine goal apart were never thrilling, but still won comfortably enough. The French had already lost their way in their abject 2-0 defeat to Sweden in Kiev on Tuesday, which was followed by the sort of changing-room row they hoped they had left behind in South Africa two years ago.

Watching tonight's meek surrender in the Shakhtar stadium, it is worth remembering Les Bleus were on a 23-game unbeaten run a week ago and were the last team to eliminate Spain from a competition - the 2006 World Cup. France suffered from nerves throughout Euro 2012, and bottled it tonight. Coach Laurent Blanc admitted in his pre-match press conference what most of us had been thinking - the best tactic is to keep Spain at bay for the first twenty minutes and then think about attacking. Unfortunately for France, the defensive mindset going into the game found itself outflanked by events on the pitch.

As it happened, Xabi Alonso, on his 100th appearance, scored in the 19th and his team never looked back, apart from the first ten minutes of the second half when the French pressed and had Spain backpedalling. Alonso added a penalty in injury time for the coup de grace.

France never truly threatened to score due to an incoherent forward line and lack of team spirit. While Frank Ribery twisted and turned dangerously on the left, Karim Benzema misfired at centre-forward and attacking substitutes Olivier Giroud, Jeremy Menez and Samir Nasri all failed to make an impression.

Content to sit back and soak up Spanish attacks in the first half, they failed to put their opponents on the ropes after the break when they needed an equaliser. As the minutes ticked away, Blanc's men were reluctant to throw men forward at 0-1, presumably for fear of leaving gaps at the back.

Spain won 55% of possession, low by their standards, but registered five shots on target to France's one. Cesc Fabregas looked out of sorts as the 'false No.9', while substitute Fernando Torres had another limp display, offside more than dangerous.

Winning while playing badly is a sign of great teams of course, but all Spain knows La Roja must up their game on Wednesday to beat their Iberian neighbours Portugal and on-fire Cristiano Ronaldo, the player of the tournament so far.

Tonight: England v Italy
Weds: SF Spain v Portugal
Thurs: SF Germany v England/Italy
Sun: Final

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile


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Euro 2016 stadia confirmed

UEFA has confirmed eleven stadia as venues for the 2016 European Championship.

The French Football Federation have finalised the following as host cities:

Paris - Stade de France 81,000,
Marseilles - 67,000
Paris - Parc des Princes 51,000
Lyon - 51,000
Lille - 50,000
Lens - 45,000
Bordeaux - 42,000
Toulouse - 41,000
Saint Etienne - 41,000
Nancy - 35,000
Nice - 35.000

At next year's Euro 2012 tournament, the finalists increase from 16 to 24 out of UEFA's 53 member nations.

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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Blanc and black and red all over

Europe is treading clumsily where America has learned not to tread long ago.

The recent row over the possibility of quotas of non-black players in France's national football academies showed how Europeans still do not 'get' race and are prone to reflex comments of xenophobia and maybe worse.

The transcripts of a discussion last November show that a meeting between the FFF's technical director, national coach Laurent Blanc and the U20 and U21 managers show the four discussing introducing a quota of a maximum of 30% of academy places for boys with dual nationality.

The goal was to stop the federation wasting so much time and money on youngsters who end up playing for another country in the end, a reasonable aspiration. Unfortunately the waters were muddied when Blanc spoke of modifying the French youth football culture to concentrate less on size and strength, which in his words is the preserve of "les blacks", and seek "other criteria" in the 12-13 age range.

Such a shame this story came from France, a full 13 years since its multi-racial team won the World Cup, briefly uniting a fragmenting society, and in the process leaving Le Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen an ostracised buffoon for mocking the lack of players singing the belligerent words of La Marseillaise.

New France had triumphed, or so it seemed. Since then there have been serious race riots, prompted by President Nicolas Sarkozy's infamous 'racaille' comment in 2005, while in 2008 the French national anthem was drowned out by Tunisian immigrant boos at the Stade de France, provoking a soul-searching national debate into whether the French dream of making everyone a citoyen with liberté, égalité et fraternité had become in fact un cauchemar (nightmare).

The French player mutiny at the World Cup in South Africa was fomented by black members of the team, adding an unnecessary racial tone to the debate, while fueling the already widespread domestic criticism of multiculturalism, which led to the infamous ban on burkas in France this year.

Around the same time of Blanc's faux pas, an England footballer was fined £20,000 when, referring to Ghana's friendly visit, he tweeted, "Immigration has surrounded the Wembley premises! I knew it was a trap! The only way to get out safely is to wear an England shirt and paint your face w/ the St. George's flag!"

Straightforward bigotry then, except that the tweeter in question was black (Carlton Cole), which stops our (pre?)judgment in its tracks somewhat.

That is the problem with judging racial incidents - they are rarely just black and white, so to speak. Perhaps the most infamous racial incident in British football came not when the dimwitted Crystal Palace chairman Ron Noades absurdly claimed in 1991 that black players were not as good in the winter as white ones and for all their flair lacked "common sense", but when former Manchester United manager Ron Atkinson referred off-camera to Marcel Desailly as "what is known in some schools as a fucking lazy thick nigger" after the defender had made a crucial mistake playing for Chelsea in 2004.

'Racist Ron' lost his job at once and has not been seen on British screens since, (although he does work across the Irish Sea on soccer shows), and yet a closer examination of his career left the bigot tag hanging loosely. Atkinson after all had signed several fine black players for West Brom - like Laurie Cunningham and Cyrille Regis, at a time when other high-profile clubs were conspicuously not recruiting non-whites.

He might have kept the residual colonial attitudes many of his generation did, but in practice Ron clearly valued blacks as much as white players, showing not a hint of racism until the infamous broadcast.

While many have rushed to hang Blanc as a hate-monger and the FFR as a primeval den of prejudice, once more the facts do not back up the accusation in full. Blanc has played with a multitude of ethnicity for years, captained the famous 1998 World Cup team and has been a gentleman respected by one and all.

French skipper Alou Diarra and Desailly himself leaped to Blanc's defence, although fellow French black stars Lilian Thuram and Patrick Vieira rounded on him, probably recognising themselves as the muscular types Blanc had hinted at the FFF ignoring in the future.

Perhaps the most contentious part of the recorded conversation was when Blanc spoke about "our culture" in reference to his frustration at players coming through the French elite academies only to play for another country. But he had a point as an employer investing time and money for no end product:

"When people wear the jersey of the [French] national team at Under-16, Under-17, Under-18, Under-19, Under-20 and A level," said Blanc, "and then they go to North African or African teams, that bothers me enormously."

It is hard to disagree with that sentiment when you have devoted so much to training somebody up only for them to jump ship to a competitor, but in the context of football this is a problem for all globalised western countries with no obvious solution under FIFA eligibility rules. In cities like London, Paris or New York, there must be millions of children with multiple passports. This fundamentally is multiculturalism, not ethnicity.

Calling someone a racist remains a practice too often abused, however necessary it is in genuine cases. A permanent marker, it remains a potent weapon in a fight, a trump card to win all arguments whatever the evidence to the contrary. People can deal with being called a fool or similar epithets, but universally shudder at the thought of being labeled a racist.

Those who swallowed the headlines and labelled Blanc as a bigot should have read the entire transcript, including his statement that he had no problem with other races and that picking eleven black men for France "suits me fine". The furor seems to centre around his generalising of "black" players as tall and strong men and use of the word "culture".

This is a messy minefield, where the slightest comment about ethnic or cultural difference can lead to branding and public humiliation, which makes any comfortable conclusion impossible. Is it simply taboo now to mention any obvious difference between races, even when it is a compliment to fact e.g. blacks sprint faster than whites?

Almost forgotten amid the hullabaloo is Blanc mentioning the Spanish had told him they had "no problems" because they had no blacks in their team, conveniently forgetting Marcos Senna was instrumental in helping them to Euro 2008. Perhaps the Spanish were referring to the French bust-up in South Africa, but what Blanc was surely implying, even though he did not say it explicitly, was that the Spanish are ahead of the world right now with a team of short, mobile ball-wizards instead of charging midfield mastodons.

The Spanish quote, if true, was surely more racist than anything Blanc said, and comes as no surprise. Italy has worse racial problems in football than France too, while Eastern Europe is in a class of its own, cerca 1950.

The Blanc row comes at a time France is struggling publicly to unite its disparate tribes under one flag, perhaps not helped by the perception of an islamophobic President ensconced in the Elysée Palace. It is not a fire that can be put out quickly.

Humans create hierarchies of class, race, accent, religion, geography, money, you name it, and discrimination springs from each attempt to divide and differentiate. Football is just another stage for these eternally bad practices but until this summer, French football had seemed a success story for ethnic harmony.

Suffice to say, Laurent Blanc should pick the best players for his team whoever they may be, as he has always done, and given some peace, he will continue to do that.

May the best men play.

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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French lessons for the crème anglaise

England 1:2 France - International Friendly, Wembley, Att 85,495.

Another false dawn for England. Another French dressing-down. The euphoria following the Three Lions' impressive Euro 2012 qualifying wins over Bulgaria and Switzerland has been replaced by a familiar torpor.

A dismal 0-0 qualifying draw at home to Montenegro followed by last night's 1-2 friendly reverse to France have sharpened the Fleet Street knives once more for Fabio Capello. The opposition was pertinent. The French team collapsed in mutiny in South Africa, were eliminated by a weak host nation and flew home before the cartes postales. England had it bad but France a lot worse and are still lacking aces Franck Ribéry and Patrice Evra, in exile alongside bête noire Nicolas Anelka, who has probably played his last game for his country.

Yet Laurent Blanc's men played yesterday with verve and élan, like they had turned over a brand new leaf, and showed hints of a real renaissance for a soccer nation that was on top of the world a decade ago. The hosts on the other hand were still warbling from an old hymn book of tired tunes.

To be fair to Capello, it was a friendly and not an eliminator, but the warning signs were loud and clear once more, a mournful drone of English shortcomings echoing around the vast arena. Ball control, positional awareness, tactical acumen, imagination - why are these skills still so hard for English footballers to learn? We should not blame the players - they have not been taught properly. The youthful replacements drafted in fell short with the exception of Newcastle's Andy Carroll, who had a mature and promising debut as a lone target man, bagging air superiority from the off and troubling the French defence at low level on at least one occasion.

The 4-2-3-1 showed Capello had learnt the lesson of Bloemfontein and ditched his static 4-4-2, but too many of its practitioners failed to function. Theo Walcott again showed he has pace and control but little else, Kieron Gibbs and Jordan Henderson proved they had been fast-tracked into the national team too quickly while Gareth Barry, not long ago the subject of a great transfer tussle, was as lethargic and ineffective as he had been in South Africa.

The insertion of Ashley Young and Adam Johnson on the wings after the break, along with Peter Crouch's goalscoring cameo, helped turn the blue tide but equally showed the talent pool is rather shallow at the Football Association. The fact is England need ten Jack Wilsheres pushing for selection.

A (French?) revolution is what is required, with a huge increase in the number of coaches and a wholesale shift in mentality to emphasize skills acquisition and tactical intelligence above winning at youth level. Dennis Bergkamp, exquisitely gifted in a way most Englishmen are not, believes the ages of 8 to 12 are the key ones for developing talent, years when most English kids are not being properly schooled in the game. At Wembley, the blue shirts did the basics better than the whites - controlling and distributing accurately at speed while being aware of the movement of their teammates. English football is still obsessed by the individual instead of the collective, as a cursory glance at any tabloid's back pages will confirm.

"Skill-wise at the moment, the English players are really, really, not at the level", David Ginola said to the BBC post-match. Quite so, England had no-one with the sublime dribbling skills of Samir Nasri, the elegant playmaking of Yoann Gourcuff or the penetrative power of Florent Malouda on display at Wembley.

The morning after the debacle brought a modicum of hope with the belated announcement that the National Football Centre had at last been given the green light after years of stasis. France's Clairefontaine site has acquired mythic status, with Italy's Coverciano not far behind. St George's Park in Burton-on-Trent will be a huge advance from previous bases at Bisham Abbey and Lilleshall, with the ambitious goal of its coaches training a quarter of a million people to teach football by 2018.

The only hope remains in the future. For the next couple of tournaments we can reasonably expect the motherland of the game to show flashes of hope but then hit that invisible forcefield known as the quarter-finals, while fans and media alike blame particular players or coaches for another England disaster with its roots in youth coaching.

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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