Merde alors! We haven’t quite finished with the French

robespierre

Apologies instantly to Tony who, commenting on the last piece, thought one bite at la cerise of French football was already more than enough. Jeremy Robson, who clearly puts my stance on Evra, Anelka et al on a par with the way his ancestors regarded wicked coalowners, simply wouldn’t shut up. His thoughts are now published uninterrupted after an earlier technical glitch …

It was interesting to see the quotations from the “punished” French players referring to “being on strike” rather than “being banned”.

One thing is for certain, and that it that you can no longer kill someone who is already dead, any more than you can effectively blacklist players who have already withdrawn their labour.

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Evra, Anelka & co: saints not sinners after all?

lequipe
Salut! Sunderland readers produced a healthy response to my account of the French Football Federation’s individual punishments for four of the five players called before a disciplinary commission.

One, presumably Irish reader still hadn’t forgotten the Hand of Henry; someone else considered it a mark of arrogance to have a point of view at all. And two Sunderland fans in Canada – both regular contributors to these pages – described events in terms suggesting a struggle between downtrodden labour and ruthless capitalism.

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