Marcel Desailly, Bixente Lizarazu, Lilian Thuram, Claude Makelele and Zinedine Zidane: these five legends wished to turn the page of the French team after Euro 2004, which the Blues left in the quarter-finals on a pitiful defeat against Greece (0-1). And if the last three returned to their decision a year later, another member of the France 98 generation did not have the chance to go to the 2006 World Cup.
On the return from Portugal, Robert Pirès is still part of the tricolor group. Raymond Domenech, who succeeds Jacques Santini, summons him for his first match on the Blues bench, in August 2004 against Bosnia and Herzegovina. He renewed his confidence in her with Israel and the Faroe Islands a month later, then before Ireland and Cyprus. But in Nicosie, on October 13, his international career stopped suddenly.
Robert Pirès and the Blues, “it ended in a parking lot”
The former left winger (51 years old) looks on this sad end, which he still has not completely digested, in the podcast
Kampo Hosted by journalist Smaïl Bouabdellah.
“It was Daniel Moreira who replaced me on my last match, in Cyprus. In 2004. I looked at the second half in the parking lot, he recalls, with a certain bitterness towards his ex-selector. Did I talk to Raymond? But you're crazy! »»
“It ended like that my adventure with the Blues. In a parking lot so I was 'worship'. There I was upset. This is one of the few times I was upsethe says. Half-time in Cyprus, we win 2-0, he takes me out. He does: 'Okay, I make a change. Robert, you leave your place. Daniel, you come home '. It ended like that with him. Why did he do that? Because it sucks, what do you think? Anyway, that's how it is, it doesn't matter. »»
After this meeting, Robert Pirès expressed his frustration in the media, while applying for the next match against Poland, November 17. But the link is broken between the two men. “Nothing in the attitudes of the coach allows me to think that he trusts mehe then lets go in France Football. I feel like I am in school, to be twenty years old and to start playing football … “ The former arsenal player's counter will remain blocked at 79 selections.
