It would be fair to say that things did not go to plan for Olivier Giroud and France last night, as they lost 2-0 against Germany in a friendly match.
Of course the result does little to change France’s status as pre-tournament favourites heading into the European Championship in Germany, but they were left frustrated after a defeat to the host country last night.
Florian Wirtz scored after seven seconds as Germany ended a three-game winless run, then Kai Havertz fired in Jamal Musiala’s cutback to confirm victory for Julian Nagelsmann’s side late on.
Inter’s Marcus Thuram started for France but he lasted an hour before being replaced by Giroud after what was a poor performance, with the fans chanting to see their all-time top scorer.
As Football Italia write, L’Equipe were unimpressed with Thuram’s display, giving him a rating of 3: “Isolated, the striker never really seemed to be in the game. He missed an opportunity to beat the competition in view of the European Championships.”
Giroud meanwhile spoke to RMC Sport at the end of the friendly (via PianetaMilan) and he gave a rather honest view on how things went.
“We will have to react already on Tuesday against Chile. However, we must not think that everything is negative, we had some good scoring opportunities,” he said.
“Of course, there are things to correct and improve, but it is better to make mistakes in these types of friendly matches than in June. I’m definitely not worried about the result, but it certainly has to help us get back to attention.
“Germany were better than us, but not everything is up for discussion. I’m not worried about it anymore. Griezmann? It’s true that Antoine is a bit of a creator and the one who commands the game in our team, but there are other players too.
“He could have brought something more, but the guys who were on the pitch today were also capable of doing so, so there’s no need to make excuses. We had the chance to do better. We all played badly.”
Badly is a nice way to put it. It lacked everything, including professionalism. It’s friendly but… people paid for tickets, and we are invested in this team.
But it’s still a friendly…..
Now if they stopped playing stupid friendlies and generally shoving football down our throats it might get back to being special!