The 57-year-old former defender, whose name is booed at every match, has never made any effort to make himself popular, but here are 10 reasons (or nearly 10) why football fans may want to reconsider their view:

1. He has never won anything as a coach, a characteristic shared by most soccer fans, which makes him less intimidating than, say, Giovanni Trapattoni.

2. He was a workaholic defender with limited skills in his playing days, with makes a nice change in a country full of retired magicians.

3. He is more successful as a coach than the great Michel Platini, under the guidance of whom France failed to win a single match at Euro 92.

4. He convinced Zinedine Zidane, Lilian Thuram and Claude Makelele to come out of retirement and guide France all the way to the 2006 World Cup final.

5. He made Yoann Gourcuff his playmaker when others doubted he even had a place in the starting line-up.

6. He made sure Loic Remy, Andre-Pierre Gignac and Bafetimbi Gomis became famous outside their regions.

7. He is an incurable romantic, asking his partner to marry him rather than apologising to the fans after France lost a World Cup final largely because of Zidane's infamous headbutt.

8. He is not obsessed with television, being the only Frenchman not to have watched the replay of Wednesday's controversial goal.

9. Most people don't like him, so being a fan of Domenech is more original than liking Nelson Mandela, the Beatles or chocolate ice cream.

10. OK, that's only nine. Anyone care to nominate a 10th?

PHOTO: France team coach Raymond Domenech (C) celebrates their win against Ireland in their World Cup qualifying playoff return leg match at the Stade de France stadium in Saint Denis near Paris November 18, 2009. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

If you don't mind the sight of St Etienne glued near the bottom of the Ligue 1 table, you did not grow up in France in the 1970s.

Everybody there then had two teams, their own and Les Verts (The Greens). Even today, many fans of other sides have a soft spot for the team from a small industrial town near Lyon.

Why? Simply because France, where football is not part of the popular culture, fell in love with the beautiful game courtesy of St Etienne's European Cup saga in 1976.

An unglamorous outfit featuring players who had worked in the city's factories, they went all the way to the final, losing to Bayern Munich in Glasgow. And many people will tell you they only lost because Hampden Park was the only place in the world at that time, apart from maybe some pitch in Kazakhstan, to still have square, wooden posts instead of round, metal ones.

The St Etienne players hit that archaic woodwork twice and the ball bounced off it. Had the posts been round, like at every civilised stadium outside Scotland, they would have gone in. No doubt.

That year, green fever was everywhere, with Les Verts' stupid fan song playing on the radio all the time. But St Etienne are not just about that.

They have won a record 10 French titles, were graced by such great players as Michel Platini, Johnny Rep and Dominique Bathenay (don' t say who?, he was my favourite). And the stadium, called Geoffroy-Guichard but only known as the Cauldron, was like no other place on earth. It could really burn in there.
 
Then came a financial scandal, spells in the second division and the rise of neighbours and arch-rivals Olympique Lyon, now the measure of all things in France, just to make matters worse.

Football has entered another era and moved away from its working-class roots, not to mention tight, shiny shirts and tiny shorts.

St Etienne today have two chairmen, who occasionally argue and have just posted a statement on the club's website saying coach Laurent Roussey's fate depends on the outcome of the side's next two home matches.

"We're not stupid and we can read," midfielder Geoffrey Dernis told reporters. "We all know what's going on and it's not easy. The toughest part will be not being afraid when we enter the pitch."

Once upon a time, Les Verts did not fear anyone in their Cauldron and their only feeling when playing there was pride.

PHOTO: Bafetimbi Gomis (C) of St Etienne celebrates with Geoffrey Dernis (L) and Blaise Matuidi (R) after scoring against Hapoel Tel Aviv during their UEFA Cup soccer match at the Geoffroy Guichard stadium in Saint-Etienne Oct 2, 2008. REUTERS/Robert Pratta

Grandly nicknamed the Latin Legend, he has been working at a Mexican restaurant in the Dallas area since the age of 13.

Before coming here, he went through strenuous daily workouts at the U.S. team's year-long residence programme in Colorado Springs. He went missing at one stage and was kicked out of the team before being reinstated in appeal.

The night before Friday's draw, he had found his best friend and team mate Gary Russell Jr. unconscious in the room they share. Russell had collapsed after struggling to make his weight. He is okay now but his Olympics are over.

And here is Yanez, in the mixed zone after winning his first fight, politely calling you "Sir" and explaining he's just had fun in the ring. He is smiling, his eyes are shining.

A few hours earlier, Deontay Wilder had been here, talking to the same journalists, also calling them "Sir" and loudly promising to go all the way to gold.

Three years ago, basketball was his thing and he had never boxed. He was 19 and became a father. His daughter was born with a spinal condition and doctors feared she might never walk, a prediction she has now defied.

To get the money he needed to pay for her medical care, Wilder took up two jobs, sleeping between shifts, and started to box, figuring it was a good way of making money. He learned fast.

Same spot, a day before. Rau'shee Warren hides his face in his hands and cries. Totally distraught, he then falls into the arms of a U.S. team spokeswoman. "I want to go home", he tells her.

He is 21 and is a world champion. Four years ago, on his Olympic debut as a 17-year-old, he had lost in the first round. He decided to carry on as an amateur for four more years and the same has just happened. All the hard work, the sacrifices, it hasn't paid off.

Warren once told his story about growing up in a rough Cincinnati district. The violence, the friends in jail. He hit the gym. Where would he be, had he not?

A few hours before, Jerome Thomas had been here. The Frenchman suffers from a rare birth defect called Poland syndrome. His left hand is shorter than his right, has no left pectoral muscle and needed seven operations to separate the fingers of his left hand.

Once told he was too weak to box, he won a bronze medal in Sydney and a silver in Athens. But his struggle to stay under his weight limit has taken its toll. He has just lost. He will never be an Olympic champion. "My body let me down," he says. "I'm not afraid of the truth."

That was just a couple of days at the boxing, a school of life and a true Olympic sport.

Picture by Lee Jae-Won, Reuters 

On one side, you have the likes of Portugal, the Dutch or Spain, a bunch of daring young artists delighting football romantics with their wizardry. On the other side are the usual suspects, Italy and France, ageing cynics boring everybody with their cast-iron back fours and tireless holding midfielders.

Of course, the poets beating the bad guys at the end would be excellent news to the lovers of the beautiful game.

But wait a minute. Isn't football about winning? That means you have to score one more goal than your opponents, so one's enough providing you don't concede any. A rock solid defence, then, is a good way to start.

And what's wrong with merciless winning machines not allowing their opponents an inch of space and then relentlessly marching forward to get the goal they need? What's wrong with the thrilling Euro 2000 final between France and Italy or the awe-inspiring AC Milan side of the early 1990s?

Can't we have a soft spot for warriors compensating limited skills with total dedication to their duty, the team and the playing system? Do a google search and take a look at Didier Deschamps's record, to name just one famous example.

Cristiano Ronaldo is all very fine but without a Chelsea-flavoured defence keeping shop at the back for Portugal, would he be able to show off his skills?

Football is a team sport and shouldn't be just about individuals, however brilliant. There is room for different approaches and all are respectable as long as they win matches.

Football doesn't have to be total, it just needs to be football.

Patrick Vignal, with the French team in Vevey

PHOTO: Cristiano Ronaldo stands on the pitch after the Group A game between Portugal and Czech Republic at Stade de Geneve in Geneva, June 11, 2008. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

Every year it's the same story. Lyon destroy the opposition in Ligue 1 and fail to make an impact in Europe.

Last weekend's 4-2 win over Bordeaux in a top-of-the-table clash means Lyon are six points clear at the top with 10 games left and poised to win a seventh consecutive title.

A few days before that, they had lost 1-0 to Manchester United at Old Trafford to disappear from the Champions League in the first knockout round for the second year running. The three years before that, they had left in the quarter-finals. In a class of their own in France for years, they have never advanced beyond the last eight of European club football's showcase event.

So what's the problem?

Ligue 1 clubs, with minimal TV rights compared to what teams from the other major European leagues get, are not rich enough to keep their best players, not to mention attract top names. Take Franck Ribery, blossoming at Bayern Munich after leaving Marseille and now saying he can't imagine playing for a French club again, not even Lyon.

That's one problem. But you could also argue that Lyon are not trying very hard to keep their best assets. Once a big club makes a lucrative offer, off they go. Michael Essien, Florent Malouda and Eric Abidal, to name just a few, are now all grazing from more glamorous pastures.

Chairman Jean-Michel Aulas, the boss of a software company who has turned Lyon from a sleepy provincial sideto France's best team, is now promising his latest jewel, striker Karim Benzema, will not go anywhere. The Lyon fans can only hope he will keep his word .

Over the past few years, Lyon have made a fortune by selling players and reinvested little in reinforcements. Why? Probably because Aulas needs cash to finance a new stadium to be ready in 2010.

A new stadium is fine but you need a fine team to play in it. Can Lyon have that? If they keep Benzema and his mate Hatem Ben Arfa, who's just as special, maybe.

Patrick Vignal, Paris

PHOTO: Cris walks off after Lyon lose at Manchester United, March 4 REUTERS/Darren Staples

Karim Benzema looks certain to one day leave Olympique Lyon for more glamorous pastures. If Lyon have their way, he could end up being the most expensive player ever.

The 20-year-old France striker has burst into the limelight this season, scoring 26 goals in all competitions including one in the 1-1 Champions League draw with Manchester United last week which Alex Ferguson called a "marvellous strike".

Sir Alex is not the only manager to have spotted the phenomenon, who is clearly good enough for any club. Real, AC Milan, Chelsea, you name it. A rare combination of power and skill, Benzema can do it all.

His gift for close control and unique game intelligence are reminiscent of another French prodigy of North African descent, Zinedine Zidane. But the young man is a true striker with a taste for blistering runs, who has that nack of being at the right place at the right time.

He is a matchwinner who can make a goal out of nothing, not unlike the player he admires the most, Brazil's Ronaldo (not now obviously).

All this comes at a price, and that could be more than when Zidane left Juventus for Real Madrid in 2001 for a world record fee of 75 million euros.

Lyon chairman Jean-Michel Aulas, who knows what he has in Benzema, is working out a plan. The player is contracted to Lyon until 2012 and Aulas is negotiating a two-year extension with a pay rise that would make Benzema the highest-paid player in Ligue 1. The Lyon boss said he was also considering setting a buyout clause worth 100 million euros.

"If Karim could sign with us until 2045, it would be fantastic," Aulas said last week.

Benzema himself said he saw his future at Lyon and wanted to stay there until they won the Champions League. That could be quite a long time.

There is little doubt, however, that he will eventually move on and become a Galactico, a Fantastico or something of that kind. There isn't anybody money can't buy. In Benzema's case, however, it will have to be an awful lot of money.
 
Patrick Vignal, Paris

PHOTO: Benzema in action against Manchester United, Feb. 20 REUTERS/Toby Melville

In their own way (the wrong one), Metz are well-placed to break plenty of records. They could, in fact, end the season as the worst team in French soccer league history.

The easterners are stuck at the bottom of the Ligue 1 table with eight points from 22 matches and just one victory. Let's take a closer look at their dreadful performances and see just how many lines in the record books they could earn.

For the lowest number of points, the French record is held by Racing Lens with 17 in the 1988-89 season (three wins, eight draws, 27 defeats). Not good, but Metz could do worse.

For the lowest number of wins, the record is shared by Reims (1978-79), Lens again (88-89) and Nimes (92-93) with three. Metz can beat that too.

The record for the lowest number of goals was set by Stade Francais, a Paris club now famous for rugby, with 18 (66-67). Metz, who have scored 11 so far, can beat that too, but must go from bad to really bad if they're going to manage it.

They are more records at stake for Metz but let's not be too cruel for a club who lifted the French Cup twice and boasted such great players as Robert Pires and Franck Ribery.

Unless you live there, you've probably never heard of most the players on their current squad, which partly explains why they could break all those records...

All born in 1987, the year when Michel Platini retired, the trio first attracted attention by helping France win the European Under-17 title three years ago. Since then they've done enough to suggest they are indeed the future of French football.

The three played their first international this year, all scoring on debut, like a certain Zinedine Zidane once did.

Being of North African descent and possessing exceptional skills mean the three have inevitably been compared with the great man, especially Nasri, the only playmaker in  the lot who, like the balding maestro, grew up in a Marseille suburb.

Unlike Zidane, who never did, Nasri actually plays for Marseille, where his game intelligence and maturity beyond his years have already made him the boss.

The other two were formed at and play for six-times French champions Olympique Lyon.

A lethal mix of power, speed and skill, forward Benzema grew up admiring Ronaldo (the real one, not Cristiano) and his 11 goals from 14 league games this season indicate he could become just as devastating. Unfortunately for David Trezeguet (sorry, Julien), France coach Raymond Domenech's headaches when it came to decide who to field up front alongside Thierry Henry are now over.

Benzema is the obvious answer and if Domenech needs a complement for his two strikers, a young magician capable of acting both as an attacking midfielder and a winger, he can confidently pick Ben Arfa.

Arguably the most gifted of the three youngsters, Ben Arfa was once criticised for not trying hard enough and some were concerned he might waste his talent but he has definitely made his breakthrough and the harmonious pair he forms with Benzema at Lyon has become Ligue 1 defenders' worst nightmare.

The three still need to learn and might be too tender to steal the limelight at next year's Euro 2008 finals but by 2010, they should all be gracing glamorous outfits such as Arsenal or Real Madrid and the World Cup in South Africa could provide them with the perfect stage on which to show off what they're made of.

PHOTO: Thierry Henry and Karim Benzema during their Euro 2008 Group B qualifying match against Lithuania in Nantes, October 17, 2007. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau

A long nightmare ended for soccer lovers on Thursday when their favourite sport returned to the front page of French sports daily L'Equipe. There was Thierry Henry, who had just surpassed Michel Platini to become France's top scorer of all time with 43 goals after the two he scored in a 2-0 win over Lithuania in an Euro 2008 qualifier the previous night in Nantes.

Before that, for weeks, it had been rugby, rugby, rugby. In the news, on advertising boards, in talk shows ... a sport normally restricted to the southwestern areas of the country was everywhere.

Soccer fans became tired of hearing that their rugby counterparts were better behaved, although that is largely true, and players were fed up being told that in rugby, nobody ever contests a refereeing decision and only the captain can talk to the ref, providing he does so politely. True, too.

Football surfaced now and again, like when New Zealand's reserves played soccer with the Portugal players after hammering them in a pool game at the Gerland stadium, home to six-times French champions Olympique Lyon, or when it became known that Springbok wing Bryan Habana was named after Bryan Robson.

France would have liked to use football as an inspiration and emulate the national soccer team who lifted the World Cup on home soil nine years ago. Unfortunately, England and Jonny Wilkinson had other ideas.

However, after France beat Lithuania and England lost to Russia in Wednesday's Euro 2008 qualifying action, nobody in the country was arguing about which sport really mattered.

On Thursday, kids who had been spotted playing with those strange, oval-shaped, pointy things a few days before were kicking proper footballs again. And public transport was on strike. Back to normal, at last.

Patrick Vignal, Paris

PHOTO: France's Thierry Henry celebrates after scoring against Lithuania during their Euro 2008 Group B qualifying soccer match in Nantes October 17, 2007. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

OK, Toulouse, the capital of French rugby, have improved football-wise over the past few years and finished third in Ligue 1 last season behind powerhouses Lyon and Marseille.

Then again, that was only because traditional frontrunners like Monaco and PSG had disastrous runs. And, had they not been awarded the points from a draw at Nantes after a pitch invasion by angry local fans, Toulouse would not have finished in the top three in the first place.

That doesn't mean they're bad. Their coach, Elie Baup, a.k.a. The Man with the Cap because of the one always screwed to his head,  is excellent and remembered for once taking Bordeaux all the way to the French title. They also have decent players, notably Sweden striker Johan Elmander, who they have managed to keep despite sustained pressure from more glamorous outfits.

They now also have turncoat Andre-Pierre Gignac, who stirred an uproar in the close season by assuring Lille he would join them from Lorient before changing his mind because Toulouse had offered him a better salary.

Baup likes his short passing game and insists on team effort. "We have values to defend," he likes to say. So Toulouse are not a joke. They also have European credentials. Seriously. In 1986, in the first round of the UEFA Cup, they had caused a sensation by knocking out Maradona's Napoli.

Still, while Liverpool have truckloads of silverware, Toulouse have not won anything since lifting the French Cup 50 years ago and have spent more time in the second division than in the top flight since.

Toulouse are famous for other things than rugby and soccer, notably for featuring in the title of an anthem by the greatest French rock band ever, Little Bob Story. Riot in Toulouse, the song was called. I was born to lose, it went (Toulouse, to lose, get it?). Prophetic? Maybe.

The town also has a reputation for a delicacy called cassoulet, a vegetarian's nightmare with chunks of meat floating on grease-soaked beans. Delicious.

Actually, if the Liverpool players had some of that before the matches against Toulouse, it might help the southwesterners.

Patrick Vignal, Paris