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Distin: "I don't think they realized it" | Everton center back Sylvain Distin has openly questioned the decision of the French national team to storm out of training in the middle of this summer’s World Cup. Les Blues ended up crashing out of the tournament in the group stage, and Distin hinted that the players may not have understood the repercussions of their decision at the time.
“I didn’t expect France to win the World Cup but I didn’t expect [what happened] either,” Distin said to the official Everton website.
“I don’t think anyone will ever know what happened except the players and staff who were there. At the moment it is a big mix of feelings and no-one really understands what happened.
“When they took the decision not to do the training session I don’t think they realised what was going to happen after.”
Distin went one step further to suggest that perhaps the French camp lacked a leader – such as Patrick Vieira – to calm things down. Patrice Evra was the temporary captain during the tournament, and his leadership ability has already been called into question by fans and the media.
“I think if they had a player, like [Patrick] Vieira for example, he might be a player who said ‘think about this first, it’s not going to change anything’ – and it didn’t,” said Distin.
“But I can’t judge because I wasn’t there. Maybe there is also stuff that we don’t know about that caused them to take the decision.”
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