Malouda – France need a leader to step up immediately!

The Chelsea and France winger Florent Malouda thinks that the national team are missing a natural leader like Patrick Vieira or Claude Makele before him. France has been extremely unconvincing in qualifying for the World Cup, and even more so in their recent warm up matches, and Malouda admits the team have “problems”.

“The problem is, after what we did in 2006 – and of course there was a great generation in 1998 and 2000 – expectations are very high,” Malouda told The Guardian.

“And the Euro in 2008 was a disaster. So when you are in a bad situation everything is coming out, and people are pointing the finger.

“The World Cup is really close and honestly we have a lot of problems to fix. When there is tension, when there is high-pressure games, you need characters. You need people to come out and say ‘I will take responsibility’.”

He added: “Honestly we have a lot of problems. We have to talk about a lot of things. But for that you need someone to take the first step. Guys like Patrick Vieira and Claude Makelele who can take the lead. If they are not there, somebody has to do it.”

France have a lot of top class players in thei team, but I can’t see them performing to their quality again until they get rid of Raymond Domenech. He really has no idea what he is doing…………