France Team: Thirty Players, No Room for Trezeguet

What do you do with Serie A’s #3 scorer for the season? A player who’s managed to put away 20 goals this year? The third-leading all-time goalscorer for your team?

If you’re France coach Raymond Domenech, you leave him out of your Euro squad and call up an uncapped striker instead.

In Domenech’s preliminary squad of 30 players, David Trezeguet of Juventus is out, and Bafetimbi Gomis of St. Etienne is in.

That’s the same David Trezeguet who was a member of the World Cup-winning France side in 1998, who has 34 goals for France, and who scored the Golden Goal that won Euro 2000. But Trezeguet has struggled to find a place on the national team since Domenech took over in 2004. He played very little in World Cup 2006 and is probably best remembered for the missed penalty in the final that led to Italy’s win. He played only a few games in Euro qualifying, and there have been rumors of a personality conflict with Domenech.

But the problems go deeper than personality issues. As shown in this video, Trezeguet is a classic “Fox-in-the-Box” player who’s great at finishing what others start.

Trezeguet’s Goals

Unfortunately, delivering the ball to a waiting goal poacher is not a strength of the team Domenech has assembled, and Trezeguet has languished in his last few outings for the team. Most recently, he was called up for the England friendly in March after Lyon striker Karim Benzema was injured. Even though he played into the second half, he was almost completely ineffective. And so Domenech has decided to go with his chosen strikers from Euro qualifying: Thierry Henry, Nicolas Anelka, Karim Benzema and Djibril Cisse. And he’s added the new face of Gomis.

In a way, this makes sense. There’s only an infinitesimal chance that Domenech will take five strikers to Euros, so one of these five will probably be cut. Given Trezeguet’s history with Domenech and the team recently, if Trezeguet had been called up he would have been the player cut. It’s almost less painful to not make the team at all.

And Gomis is no slouch, either. He’s one of the top goal-scorers in Ligue 1 this year, tying Djibril Cisse with sixteen goals scored. And he’s only twenty-two. Trezeguet is thirty. If Gomis continues to develop, he could be a factor in World Cup 2010.

Another big factor in Gomis’s callup is the fact that he is of Senegalese descent and eligible to play for either Senegal or France. If Domenech gives him a cap in one of the upcoming friendlies with Paraguay, Colombia or Ecuador, he will be permanently tied to France. This callup could be considered Domenech staking his claim on the striker, much as he did when he called up Karim Benzema in 2006, when Algeria was also interested.

The following video shows Gomis in action. (And as Jeff says over at our France Team Page, “This might be one of those You Tube football-compilation videos better viewed in mute.”)

Here is the preliminary France team:

Goalkeepers: Gregory Coupet (Olympique Lyon), Sebastien Frey (Fiorentina), Mickael Landreau (Paris St Germain), Steve Mandanda (Olympique Marseille).

Defenders: Eric Abidal (Barcelona), Jean-Alain Boumsong (Lyon), Francois Clerc (Lyon), Sebastien Squillaci (Lyon), William Gallas (Arsenal), Julien Escude (Sevilla), Patrice Evra (Manchester United), Philippe Mexes (AS Roma), Willy Sagnol (Bayern Munich), Lilian Thuram (Barcelona).

Midfielders: Alou Diarra (Girondins Bordeaux), Lassana Diarra (Portsmouth), Mathieu Flamini (Arsenal), Claude Makelele (Chelsea), Jeremy Toulalan (Lyon), Patrick Vieira (Inter Milan).

Forwards: Nicolas Anelka (Chelsea), Hatem Ben Arfa (Lyon), Karim Benzema (Lyon), Sidney Govou (Lyon), Djibril Cisse (Marseille), Samir Nasri (Marseille), Bafetimbi Gomis (St Etienne), Thierry Henry (Barcelona), Florent Malouda (Chelsea), Franck Ribery (Bayern Munich).