Both teams had a dismal World Cup but, on the evidence of tonight's friendly, France are recovering faster
Vive la r�volution. If England and France have been two teams in therapy since the trauma of their South African experiences, it was patently clear tonight which has been responding better to treatment.
They have taken divergent paths since the World Cup, France making a clean break with the past by installing Laurent Blanc and England sticking with Fabio Capello in the hope he could divine the lessons of Bloemfontein. Blanc dispensed with all but one of his backroom staff and hired a psychologist to improve team harmony, whereas Capello's only concession to change was a promise to employ another English coach who has yet to emerge.
Both have tried to integrate new players into a framework of more established faces. Tonight it was clear who was having more success. In his defence, Capello could point only to the fact that France, if not at full strength, were able to call on more first-choice players than England.
Blanc, having in many ways echoed the dawn of Capello's England reign by insisting on discipline off the pitch, has remodelled the French squad carefully on it. He has done so partly by design and partly through the enforced removal of some of the more disruptive elements of the squad that blew up so spectacularly under Raymond Domenech.
The aftershocks linger in the courts, with Domenech suing the French Football Federation and the disgraced Nicolas Anelka taking action against L'Equipe. But, within the squad, harmony has been restored. Within quarter of an hour here, chants of Allez les Bleus were drowning out the England fans.
Blanc has insisted that players take their iPod earphones out, eat together at team gatherings and sing up during the national anthems, and at the start of his reign he put great emphasis on discipline on the pitch, too. France had won their previous three games without conceding by playing with solid defensive base and proceeding forward with caution. Tonight, given the freedom to experiment, he urged them to cast off their shackles and play with the artful verve of some of some of France sides of the past.
Blanc has tended to play with two defensive holding midfield players but dropped Alou Diarra to the bench and responded to public pressure by pairing the resurgent Samir Nasri with Lyon's playmaker Yoann Gourcuff. Both excelled in a fluid formation. From the third minute, when they neatly combined in the centre circle, they combined to torture debutant Jordan Henderson as they pulled the strings in midfield and repeatedly set Florent Malouda, Karim Benzema and Mathieu Valbuena clear down both flanks.
As England looked to launch long balls to Carroll, France continued to play the ball around an England midfield in which Gareth Barry was offering little resistance and Blanc's team looked incisive up front. The opening goal summed up the imbalance. Karim Benzema, the Real Madrid striker who cannot get a game for his club and has forced Blanc to dispense with his stated policy of playing only players in form, played a neat one-two with Malouda and beat Ben Foster at his near post.
Perhaps most encouragingly for Blanc, France looked like a team who were enjoying themselves and wanted to play for their manager. Nasri was the linchpin around which they revolved, his renaissance over the past year mirroring that more recently of the French side. His passing was crisp and incisive, his running penetrative and his night almost ended with a deserved goal as he crashed a shot against Foster's left-hand post.
Mired in controversy and discord long before Thierry Henry's disputed goal and the World Cup implosion that followed, last night France rediscovered the flair their supporters crave to go with their new-found defensive discipline. France played with a fluency and flair that had appeared alien to them for much of the Domenech era. Even here there was evidence of imbalance. Where England brought on Jay Bothroyd for Carroll, Blanc was able to able to call Dmitri Payet, the combustible but exciting St-Etienne forward.
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