Raymond Domenech, the coach of the French national team, has the right look to be a coach, the right clothes and hair-do. Domenech thinks like a coach, talks like one, being asked question like a coach (“do you feel like a frog in boiling water?” an Asian journalist asked him earlier, referring to the pressure he must feel from his critics). He motions like a coach, je encourages his players after a bad move, and he has six or seven ways to show his disappointment when his team misses a chance.

If only Raymond Domenech could coach.

In what might amount to the most colossal waste of talent in the past 40 football years, the French team went through what every organization, sports or otherwise, goes through. It sponges the personality of its leader.

France didn’t look like a football team on Friday. No wonder that Domenech used his first substitution to bring in his best handball player.