France's World Cup adventure is all but over after they were gunned down 2-0 by an impressive Mexico side on Thursday night. Manchester United's new signing Javier Hernandez proved once again that he is worthy of a starting place in Javier Aguirre's team by coming off the bench and skipping past Hugo Lloris to slot in the opening goal before another substitute, ageing forward Cuauhtemoc Blanco, scored a penalty to end French hopes.
It has been a bitterly disappointing tournament for France. Their failure to score so far is reminiscent of the disastrous 2002 campaign in which they entered the competition in Japan and South Korea as both world and European champions but exited after the group stage having failed to find the net in any of their three encounters.
Disappointing yes, surprising no. The team have been in disarray over the last couple of years. After an unconvincing qualifying campaign, Les Bleus booked their place in the finals with "that goal" against Ireland in the play-offs and no improvement has been noted in the interim. The French Football Federation should have been brave enough to sack Raymond Domenech months ago rather than allow him to oversee this debacle. Announcing his impending replacement by former Bordeaux coach Laurent Blanc after the World Cup was another spectacular faux pas.
Group A is now shaping up for Uruguay and Mexico to qualify to the next round, with the outcome of who will lead the classification set to be decided in their clash early next week. If those two draw then France and South Africa are definitely out, but with any other result there is still a very slim chance of either the hosts or France going through. If Mexico beat Uruguay, for example, France would qualify if they made up the five goal disparity between their goal difference with a big win over Carlos Alberto Parreira's team.
France were not the only nation to suffer yesterday. Nigeria's World Cup dream is now over after the Super Eagles surrendered a lead in a 2-1 defeat to Greece. Lars Lagerback's job was complicated by a totally unnecessary - yet completely justified - red card, which saw Sani Kaita sent off for raking Vasilis Torosidis with his studs. Greece's first ever World Cup win opens up the possibility of their qualification to the last 16 if they get a better result than South Korea in the final Group B matches.
Mathematically and not entirely unlikely, Nigeria can still go through with just a 1-0 win over the Republic of Korea. For this to be possible Greece would only have to lose 1-0 to Argentina. I wouldn't discount the West Africans just yet. They looked in cruise control and Greece until Kaita had a brain snap. However, Greece don't have the quality ROK and Nigeria were appalling against Argentina, so all this remains to be seen. Eh eh! Just imagine the scenes in Gatwick South.
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