Total football is everywhere these days, in newspaper headlines and pub conversations. A few exciting performances from attack-minded teams at Euro 2008 and we’re back in the 1970s. Endless guitar solos, long greasy hair and flying Dutchmen.

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

You don’t have to be Real Madrid to make soccer history.

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…

The problem with teenage phenomena is they don’t often live up to expectations but Samir Nasri, Karim Benzema and Hatem Ben Arfa appear to be doing just that.

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

If Liverpool accept playing rugby instead of soccer, then Toulouse stand a chance. Otherwise, the Champions League third qualifying round between the European giants and the French nobodies is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

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

Having a great club in the second division is not exclusively an Italian specialty. France have their own little Juventus in eight-times champions Nantes.

The Canaries had their wings clipped by years of mismanagement and internal squabbling and have started life as a Ligue 2 club for the first time in over four decades.

They did that in style on Monday, thrashing fellow once-great club Stade Reims 5-0. There were 27,000 fans in their Beaujoire stadium for their second division debut and plenty of ‘ola’ rounds to greet an exciting display.

Great teams never die, they say.

“We wanted to show the fans that the team have soul,” said Nantes captain Frederic Da Rocha.

A few months earlier, the same Da Rocha had said he felt ashamed after the team from the Atlantic port were relegated at the end of a record 44-year spell in the top flight.

Last season was a disaster for Nantes, who used three coaches and called former France goalkeeper Fabien Barthez to the rescue just before Christmas. That did not help at all, the bald-headed former world and European champion soon harming the club with embarrassing blunders and eventually leaving in disgrace after getting into a fight with a fan.

Nantes lovers will tell you, however, that the main problem was not Barthez but rather having the wrong people upstairs.

Nurtured for years by unpretentious father figures, the club changed dramatically in 2004 when Serge Dassault, the owner of a powerful aviation and industrial company, took control.

It soon became obvious that the man had more important things to do than looking after a football club. He let others do it and they did it any old how, breaking with those rich schooling traditions, buying the wrong players, picking the wrong coaches and leaving all those who had contributed to making Nantes such a great club over the years on the sidelines.

Things seem to be changing. A Polish-born businessman, Waldemar Kita, bought the club a few days ago and immediately said he was passionate about Nantes and determined to bring back the glory days when the Canaries, relying on homegrown talent, thrilled the crowds with their swift, attacking game.

One of his first moves, Kita said, would be to change the coach. The favourite to replace Michel Der Zakarian is former European Footballer of the Year Jean-Pierre Papin.

Let’s hope he fits in better than Barthez.

Patrick Vignal, Paris

Olympique Lyon, in a class of their own in France for years, might be challenged at last next season.

The winners of the last six Ligue 1 titles have let coach Gerard Houllier go and replaced him with Alain Perrin, joining from unglamorous Sochaux after failing to sparkle at Olympique Marseille and Portsmouth.

They have also lost several key players in Portugal midfielder Tiago, left-back Eric Abidal and winger Florent Malouda, now with Juventus, Barcelona and Chelsea respectively. Italy’s Fabio Grosso, who replaces Abidal, should do the job but the other newcomers, midfielders Mathieu Bodmer and Kader Keita, joining from Lille, are not exactly big names.

Lyon might still purchase a top striker but have failed to attract several players who would have been just fine, notably David Trezeguet and Miroslav Klose. A world-class forward is what they really need if they are to make an impact in Europe at last.

Chairman Jean-Michel Aulas, the owner of a software company, has turned Lyon from a sleepy provincial side into the measure of all things at home but what he really wants is to see them make Europe sit up and notice. Lyon have never advanced past the Champions League quarter-finals  and look unlikely to challenge the likes of AC Milan next season, unless they make a spectacular signing in the next few days.

The ones who could give them a hard time in France next season are Olympique Marseille. All right, Boudewijn Zenden, who has joined OM from Liverpool,  is no Maradona and is getting old but he is a useful winger. And the southerners have managed to keep exciting playmaker Samir Nasri and to make France striker Djibril Cisse’s stay permanent.

Marseille looked good up front last season, which they ended as runners-up to Lyon, but had a problem at the back which solid central defender Gael Givet, joining from Monaco, could help them solve.

Marseille have not won anything since lifting the European Cup in 1993 and feel the time has come to revive the glory days.

Lyon, by contrast, might be reaching the end of an era. One thing’s for sure, the Ligue 1 season, kicking off on August 4, is not a foregone conclusion for a change.

Patrick Vignal, Paris

In terms of television money, six-times French champions Olympique Lyon would risk relegation if they were in the Premier League.

Lyon pocketed under 45 million euros from TV rights last season, which is the equivalent of what the bottom clubs in England cashed in. Lyon’s rivals like Olympique Marseille and Girondins Bordeaux had to be content with under 35 million euros, less than any top-flight English side.

When you add to that the fact that the kind of money made by French clubs from ticketing and merchandising is nowhere near the sums generated in England, you understand why you have no big names playing in France and why Lyon, the measure of all things in France, have never advanced beyond the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

In a few months, the French Professional Football League will study offers from broadcasters for the 2008-2011 period. It is unlikely they will get more than the 600 million euros a year pay-TV channel Canal Plus are currently paying.

Now look at the transfers so far. Mathieu Bodmer and Kader Keita joining Lyon from Lille, Benoit Cheyrou leaving Auxerre for Marseille. Such signings can’t compete with the players joining clubs in England, Spain, Italy or even Germany.

If the stars aren’t there, broadcasters will be reluctant to pay fortunes to show the action. Even rights-holders Canal Plus are showing more and more English or Spanish matches because the French ones are deemed boring in comparison.

Clubs like Chelsea or AC Milan often make the front page of L’Equipe nowadays, which would have been inconceivable a few years back.

French clubs need more money to be more attractive but would need to be more attractive to make more money. It seems there is no solution. I bet that in a few weeks, several of the most exciting Ligue 1 players will have signed for English clubs.

Patrick Vignal, Paris