Arsenal's Olivier Giroud may be trump card for resurgent France at Euro 2016

The Arsenal and France forward has silenced his critics heading into Euro 2016.
FRANCK FIFE/AFP/Getty Images
Patrick Barclay7 June 2016

One thing about Olivier Giroud: he doesn’t let the b******* grind him down.

No more when he’s with France than at Arsenal.

No sooner are his critics being heard in his homeland, just as they sometimes grumble at the Emirates, than he silences them with two goals. Against Scotland, admittedly.

Which reminds me that perhaps the most one-sided friendly international I ever saw was on an early-June evening in 1984.

Gordon Strachan will certainly remember it, for the Scotland manager played, along with such other notables as Richard Gough, Steve Archibald and Alex Ferguson’s normally solid Aberdeen central defensive partnership of Willie Miller and Alex McLeish.

Scotland were, moreover, managed by the great Jock Stein in those days. But they were fortunate that match stats had yet to cross the Atlantic. For my recollection was that, of the 90 minutes, France relinquished possession for about two or three.

After beating Jim Leighton twice in half an hour, Michel Platini and company didn’t bother to score, but they might easily have had seven or eight and it was no surprise to those who were in Marseille for their final performance before that summer’s European Championship that they went on to win it on home soil.

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Once again France have the hosts’ advantage.

They don’t have the great Platini - who, despite his fall from grace amid the FIFA saga, deserves to be treated with respect this month, for only Diego Maradona and Pele have dominated a tournament as he did in 1984 - and Paul Pogba, for all his athleticism, may never be able to pass like Alain Giresse.

But they do have a rough equivalent of Jean Tigana in the splendidly penetrative Antoine Griezmann.

And they have Didier Deschamps, another symbol of the nation’s capacity for winning in France. The captain of Aime Jacquet’s 1998 world champions is a manager for whom players and public alike have respect. The tensions that plagued Raymond Domenech’s tenure have been banished.

Once more everyone sings the Marseillaise from the same song-sheet.

No more does Patrice Evra take part in rebellions — he was banned by the French FA along with Nicolas Anelka in 2010. Instead, at 35, the left-back plays as well, as adventurously, as ever. At right-back is another evergreen, the 33-year-old Bacary Sagna.

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But, if the French have a surprise, a trump card, it could be Giroud.

True, Strachan’s overworked Scotland defence barely tested his resourcefulness in Metz over the weekend, but he did make a strong case for a starting place in Friday’s opening match against Romania at the Stade de France.

Afterwards, he even seemed confident enough of his club status to say he was looking forward to playing with Jamie Vardy next season.

Arsenal colleague Laurent Koscielny finished off the Scots with one of those set-piece headers the Emirates faithful always appreciate and the rest was a canter.

With France favoured by the Euro 2016 draw — their other opponents are Albania and Switzerland — Didier Deschamps’s men have a chance to build momentum.

The status of favourites does not flatter them.

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