Nations take World Cup elimination hard

PARIS - French legislators huddled behind closed doors to investigate an issue of national importance - not terrorism or recession, but the French football team's meltdown at the World Cup.

From taxi drivers to President Nicolas Sarkozy, France is taking the fiasco very close to heart and demanding answers. Yesterday's extraordinary parliamentary session defied a warning by football's governing body that political power shouldn't meddle with sport.

For the French, this is about more than sports. It's a blow to the national honor at a time when the country is already worried about its decline in the world. Football-proud England and Italy, too, are wondering whether their World Cup failures are glitches or a sign of a broader malaise.

The way France, winner of the 1998 World Cup and runner-up in 2006, left this year's Cup hurt the French as much as the losing itself. They finished the first round without a single victory, after players went on strike and refused to train because forward Nicolas Anelka was sent home for insulting the coach. Then there was coach Raymond Domenech's last gesture at the Cup: refusing to shake hands with the rival coach after France's final loss to South Africa.

The debacle drove Sarkozy to summon an emergency meeting on French football, and Sports Minister Roselyne Bachelot to trash the French team in parliament.

Wednesday, French lawmakers summoned Domenech and Federation president Jean-Pierre Escalettes for a grilling.

All of the political involvement has led FIFA President Sepp Blatter to warn that the French team risks suspension from global tournaments if authorities intervene in the running of the national soccer federation.

Parliament doesn't see it that way. "It isn't FIFA's role to threaten French lawmakers; we're in a democracy and parliamentarians have the right to hear anyone they want," said lawmaker Eric Ciotti.

"This isn't just about football, it's about France: It's our honor that's at stake," added lawmaker Jacques Remiller.

Lawmakers insist they're not investigating France's poor sports showing or the coach's dubious tactical decisions, but the team's attitude and the incompetence of federation managers. French voters are "asking us about it, not about the actual athletic defeat but about the moral defeat," said Michel Herbillon, vice president of the Parliamentary Commission of Cultural and Educational Affairs, which held the hearing.

The World Cup routing of England and Italy has also triggered soul-searching.

England's 4-1 second-round defeat to old rival Germany sparked a fevered and doom-laden debate about the future of English football and its Italian coach, Fabio Capello.

A motion in the House of Commons called for an urgent inquiry to be held into the state of the national game and voiced "great disappointment at England's pathetic exit." The motion says it firmly believes that "many Premier League players are grossly overpaid and under-perform."

The Football Association will decide soon whether Capello is to retain his job as the most highly paid manager in the international game. One potential candidate to replace Capello injected a slight tone of nationalism into the debate.

"Surely we have to find a manager from England, an English manager," Tottenham coach Harry Rednapp was quoted as saying in British media reports. "I'm not talking about a Scottish manager or an Irish manager, I'm talking about an English manager because this is where we're from, this is our country."

In Italy, members of the right-wing Northern League party in his coalition have said Italy's football failure is a sign that the country's top-tier league is opening up too much to foreigners.

"By filling up our teams with foreigners, our football players have become useless," Davide Cavallotto of the Northern League was quoted as saying in Corriere della Sera after Italy's elimination.

Goodluck Johnathan, the president of Nigeria, has suspended the national soccer team from international competition for two years after a poor showing at the World Cup. The announcement said the ban would enable the country to reorganize its football administration.