First of all, they are not booing him now. And second, a penny for your thoughts, Karim Benzema?
As the controversially excluded Real Madrid striker was (presumably) settling down to watch his French team-mates kick off under huge pressure to get off to a winning start and force a hitherto preoccupied nation to focus on football, opportunity knocked for Arsenal’s Olivier Giroud.
And, after a typically uneven performance from the France No9 – all ungainly elbows and grimaces amid the flowing beauty of his quicksilver colleagues – it was a chance he gobbled up, grabbing the goal that temporarily sparked a glorious release of tension all round the Stade de France. A curate’s egg of a season for Arsenal in which he still registered 24 goals, 16 of them in the league, has given way to a warm-up phase in which he has established himself as the preferred “pivot” around which Didier Deschamps seeks to rotate an embarrassment of attacking riches, yet has still fully failed to convince the French public.
There were moments during a lively first half, in which France confirmed pre-tournament expectations that they would be gripping going forward and wobbly in defence, when one could see why Giroud is so highly prized by his coach. There were other times when one could see why he is sometimes widely mocked and, had he been more clinical, France could have secured the early goal they so craved as they surged forward with early energy.
So it was appropriate that it was Giroud’s gloriously ugly header, snatched from the fingertips of the flapping Romanian goalkeeper, Ciprian Tatarusanu, from a delicious Dimitri Payet cross before the hour, that gave France the lead. Equally typically, minutes earlier he had been fed by Payet and badly scuffed his shot.
With Giroud, who has scored seven goals in his past seven games for his country, it is as if the normal order is inverted. Deschamps possesses so many lightning-quick, fleet-footed attacking players that it is the old-fashioned striker who provides something different. For all his talents, and leaving aside the fact that his absence over the convoluted Mathieu Valbuena sex tape affair had little to do with football, Benzema arguably offers more of the same, whereas Giroud is able to give his team-mates someone to play off.
Yet it still feels wrong that Benzema is missing. The 28-year-old is at the peak of his powers but was last seen heading for Los Angeles with a French music producer called Track Dilla.
Another reason Giroud appeals to Deschamps is that his ability in the air makes him the perfect target for Payet’s laser-guided crosses.
Yet here his heading ability failed him to begin with. The match could have taken a very different shape had he opened the scoring from the first clear-cut chance of the match. Payet ghosted down the left and delivered a perfect cross but Giroud was unable to find the target with his near-post header.
And in the very last act of the half he lost his marker Vlad Chiriches, having spent much of the match exchanging shirt tugs with the Romania captain, and connected with a Payet corner, only to miss the target again. All night long he remained a willing target, even when things appeared to be conspiring against the hosts.
In some ways it seems odd that a France side so blessed going forward – with the trickery of Payet and the quicksilver Antoine Griezmann selected either side of Giroud – should have as its attacking focal point a striker who has specialised in dividing opinion. This, after all, is a side that can afford to leave Anthony Martial and Kingsley Coman on the bench and Hatem Ben Arfa, among others, at home.
Giroud, in his final league game of the season against Aston Villa, was barracked and booed by the Emirates crowd yet scored a hat-trick. He scored in the victory over Bayern Munich yet ended the season with Arsène Wenger desperately crossing his fingers that Jamie Vardy says yes to a move. Similarly, for his country Giroud was booed when he came off against Cameroon in one of the hosts’ final warm-up games despite having scored the first goal in a 3-2 victory. It is fortunate, then, that Giroud is not a man given to self-doubt, as evidenced by his adoption of the disturbing modern trend of wearing clashing neon boots.
Perhaps his finest quality, alongside his eye for goal, is simply his propensity to keep going. As the second half wore on and France started to live dangerously it was Giroud who continued to plough a lonely furrow and lead the line, finally getting his reward.
Payet’s brilliance rescued them at the end but France will have to play better than this if they are to energise a nation. The question for Deschamps may be whether to persist with his pivot or unleash Coman or Martial from the start.Yet it was telling that when Romania scored their equaliser from the penalty spot it was Griezmann rather than Giroud who was sacrificed to introduce the teenage Coman, as the Arsenal man remained the focal point of the attack. And when Martial belatedly came on as Deschamps went for broke it was Paul Pogba who made way.
Payet’s special winner makes it unlikely Deschamps will tinker too much for now; if Giroud’s goal was ugly, then the West Ham midfielder’s strike was a thing of beauty.
At the end of Act One Giroud joined him to take the applause of a very relieved crowd.
And if the Arsenal man bitterly divides opinion, he would not be the first No9 in blue to do so; step forward Stéphane Guivarc’h in the summer of 1998. Things did not turn out too badly then.
