Press views Greek 'heroes', French blues

Press views Greek 'heroes', French blues

Newspapers in France and Greece carry predictable reactions to the contrasting fates of their national football sides in Friday night's match in Lisbon. The French press is scathing in its assessment of the team's performance. In Greece, however, the mood is somewhat different. "The Blues [Les Bleus] who were kicked out of Euro 2004 in Lisbon yesterday were a team of pygmies," says Ouest France.  No rhythm, no grit, nothing  Ouest France "The fears expressed right from the start of the tournament turned out to be well founded. The team did not have what it took to back up their ambitions." "The French team, lacking anything better, produced an old folks' match compared with the Portugal-England match of the day before, displaying no rhythm, no grit, nothing of anything at all." "They've had their chips, made to a Greek recipe, which will be giving us indigestion for a long time." Exposed For the sports daily L'Equipe, "France left on this Euro championship the perfectly forgettable mark of its disorganisation and its impotence". The match against Greece, the paper says, was "a derby between the current two weakest teams" which precipitated "a well-deserved elimination". The Blues "now look totally exposed: lack of desire, lack of ideas, lack of enjoyment, lack of collective talent. Apart from two or three individuals blessed with genius, they have nothing much left. The time has perhaps come 'to make a clean break with the past'," it says. "Fielding a defence full of holes, their attack strategy disorganised, the Blues logically go out of the tournament," adds a more restrained Le Monde. Olympian By contrast, the mood in the Greek dailies is summed up in one word: ecstatic.  Vive la Grece!  Elevtherotipia "The Gods gave returned to Olympus" says O Kosmos tou Ependhiti. "Greece the giant [Portugal, Spain, France]-slayer is in the Euro 2004 semi-finals; all-night celebrations, Greece is afire." Under the banner headline: "1-0 Wonderland Greece", Ethnoswrites: "The great Michel Platini's eyes at the end said it all. At the time when the cameras were showing close-ups of the dumbfounded and humiliated faces of the French and of the proud but also dumbfounded Greeks, the "high priest" of French soccer had bent down his head and was trying to hide. "The only thing he saw was Greeks, Greek heroes." "We made it! Our national football team made a dream come true," I Kathimerini says. "Zidane's fantastic party appeared to be hypnotised by our cleverly assembled national team, which did not grant the French the slightest chance to show its capability." "The miracle has been wrought!" says a banner headline in To Vima. "There goes France as well! And who is left now? Whoever it is, we are not afraid! And this because we are one of the great teams. They are the ones who should be afraid, not us," says Ta Nea. Elevtherotipia sums up the prevailing sentiment in three words: "Vive la Grece!" BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.