
France's captain Patrice Evra admitted it felt as if his country was "a small football nation ... and it hurts" after the 2-0 defeat by Mexico which left their World Cup hopes hanging by a thread.
"It's a catastrophe, that's all we can say," Evra said. "We are not a great team. When you are knocked out of the European championship in the first round and you are also capable of being knocked out in the first round of the World Cup, you just don't want to think about football after that.
"I really thought we had learned the lessons from 2008. I honestly didn't see it coming. What hurts is that we didn't know how to react, or how to equalise, and then they killed us with that second goal.
"I am deeply upset, I'm disgusted. We owe it to ourselves to beat South Africa. But as for miracles, I don't believe in them too much."
When asked, Evra refused to go into detail as to where he felt the problems were. "I'm not going to tell you what I think went wrong," he said. "I'll tell those involved first."
Midfielder Yoann Gourcuff, who was dropped in favour of Chelsea's Florent Malouda, was equally critical.
"We couldn't pass the ball properly, they closed us down straight away," he said. "I'm very, very disappointed. It has been a collective failure over the two games. Football is hard when you can't play together.
He also made clear he felt he had been made a scapegoat for some of the team's problems. "Perhaps I have paid the price, I don't know. I've not had any explanations."
No comments:
Post a Comment