Domenech puts brave face on drab draw

France coach Raymond Domenech insists his team have nothing to worry about despite a drab 0-0 draw with Uruguay in their opening World Cup game.

The 1998 champions blew their chance to seize the initiative in Group A after South Africa battled to a 1-1 stalemate with Mexico in the first game of the tournament on Saturday.

While Domenech admits he was frustrated not to grab all three points, he said there was no reason to press the panic button.

“It’s frustrating when it goes like that, when we push and push and say to ourselves, ‘It has to go in’,” he said.

“But we were also saying to ourselves, ‘Let’s hope we don’t suffer an unlucky counter-attack’ because that would have been very disappointing, given the level we played at in this match.”

Rarely can a team have arrived at a World Cup with more baggage than France, unsettled by rumoured internal strife and criticised at home for poor form.

And they did little to appease their detractors against Uruguay, who played with 10 men for the final eight minutes after substitute Nicolas Lodeiro was sent off for a wild challenge on Bakary Sagna.

Domenech chose not to reinstall the country’s all-time top scorer Thierry Henry to the starting 11, and also controversially left Chelsea midfielder Florent Malouda out as well amid rumours of a spat.

The benching of Henry left Nicolas Anelka as the solo striker and he was all at sea for much of the match, although Malouda’s fill-in Abou Diaby did well enough.

Henry and Malouda finally came out in the last 20 minutes but even they were not able to press home the advantage of playing against 10 men.

The coach put a brave face on their performance.

“It’s a shame. I was going to say it was almost a great 0-0, but I would have preferred a bad 1-0,” he said.

“Our opponents were solid, as you’ll see in the coming matches. We succeeded in stopping them from building almost any moves. As a team, were performed very well.”

Manchester United’s Patrice Evra, who has taken over the captain’s armband from Henry, insisted they controlled the match and could have won.

“We could have won. We really wanted to take the three points,” he said.

“I’m proud of the team as I think we put in a good performance. It’s the first match and we needed to win it, but I’m very confident for the rest of the tournament.

“We controlled the game and we really deserved to win.”

France, beaten finalists in 2006, did remind everyone of their potential with some slick early play, when Franck Ribery was at the heart of the best of their attacking forays.

But they were unable to keep up the momentum in a turgid match with little goalmouth action.

Attention now turns to their next game against Mexico on Thursday in Polokwane, a crunch encounter that both sides need to win.

Domenech said he would review the Uruguay clash carefully and then decide on whether he needs to make changes.

“I obviously need to think about that and can’t give you an answer straight away,” he said.

“I need to take stock and we will take our time, watch the match again and on that basis see what can or should be done.”