Sept. 1: World Cup winner Zinedine Zidane joined in with 1998 teammate Laurent Blanc’s new look France side on Wednesday ahead of Friday’s opening Euro 2012 qualifier at home to Belarus. On paper, the French should be favoured in their group though they will have to look out for Romania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, their main Group D rivals.
However, such was the humiliation heaped upon the French during a nightmare World Cup that new coach Blanc must start by erasing some of the psychological scars after a first-round exit compounded by a training strike to protest the sending home of Nicolas Anelka.
Banned for 18 matches after his foul-mouthed outburst aimed at former coach Domenech at half-time, Anelka is unlikely to appear again in the national shirt while skipper Patrice Evra, Jeremy Toulalan and Franck Ribery are suspended owing to their role as strike ringleaders.
But the mood lightened with Zidane’s appearance as he, Blanc and assistants Alain Boghossian and Fabien Barthez attempted to infuse training with a flavour of France’s glorious past.