Paris, July 23 (DPA) New France football coach Laurent Blanc will not select any of the 23 players who participated at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa for an upcoming friendly against Norway, the French Football Federation (FFF) announced Friday.
Blanc will announce his selection Aug 5, six days before the match, which is to take place in Oslo.
The players are apparently being punished for refusing to participate at a training session ahead of France’s final World Cup group match, against South Africa. Les Bleus lost the match 2-1 and were eliminated from the tournament.
The players took their step in protest of striker Nicolas Anelka being kicked off the squad for insulting coach Raymond Domenech.
In an interview published Friday in the daily L’Equipe, starting goalie Hugo Lloris admitted that the mutiny, which was agreed by the players on the team bus, was ‘an enormous mistake’.
But he added: ‘We were more of a team on the bus than on the pitch.’
