France given food for thought

Lost their way
Fabien Barthez said it was "a miracle we avoided defeat" and Lilian Thuram admitted that the holders lost their way badly at the start of the second half, when they conceded two goals in the space of four minutes. "Of course we are disappointed," said Thuram. "We were leading 1-0 and had a real chance to win but we did not do well at the beginning of the second half. We lost our heads after the first Croatian goal. The good thing is we equalised."

'Poor positioning'
France's defence looked anything but secure in the second period and Santini criticised the "positioning" in a readjusted back four, where Marcel Desailly was making his first appearance in the tournament, with Mikaël Silvestre switched to left-back. Desailly and Thuram had a heated exchange at one point and the coach said: "We gave the ball away too easily and our positioning at the back was poor."

No solution
There was an admission from David Trezeguet, scorer of France's equaliser, that the team thought they had won the game after going in front. Trezeguet added that the reigning champions, as against England, were struggling to find an answer to their opponents' tactics. "The way other teams play against us, they only wait for us. Once again we did not find the solutions we expected."

Fightbacks
Trezeguet's strike partner, Thierry Henry, reflected that France could not always rely on their powers of recovery. "If [Trezeguet] had not scored, I do not know if we would have managed it. But he will not always save us as he did here or as I did [by winning the decisive penalty] against England. We've already scored two goals coming from nowhere against England.

Reserves in action
"You have to take into account the quality of our opponents, though, as they did not want to go out of the tournament." As thoughts turned to Monday's final Group B fixture against Switzerland, the reserve players in the squad were due to play a practice match against Clube Desportivo das Aves at 6pm today.