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France has been a football-loving country since the early days of the sport,
with a strong domestic and international football heritage. In fact, the French
national football team was the first team to score a goal in the inaugural World
Cup in 1930 against Mexico, when the team's midfielder Lucien Laurent scored.
Since then, the French national football team has played in 12 FIFA World
Cups. The team finally won the competition in 1998 as the World
Cup host nation. It beat that year's favorites, Brazil, by 3-0.
France's Zinedine Zidane scored twice and Emmanuel Petit once, the latter being
the last goal scorer in the World Cup in the 20th Century.
However, despite that great achievement France has had its fair share of good
and bad World Cups. One example of a poor outing was the 2002 World Cup when
France shocked its fans by being knocked out in the first round by Senegal, who
won by 1-0. One of the reasons for the loss was attributed to the absence of key
player, Zinedine Zidane, who was forced to sit out of the tournament due to injury.
That embarrassing performance resulted in the firing of the French national
football team's coach Roger Lemerre, who succeeded coach Aime Jacquet who guided the
team to victory in the 1998 World Cup.
Over the years the French national
football squad has boasted some top players including Just Fontaine,
Thierry Henry, Zinedine Zidane, Patrick Vieira, Didier Deschamps, Laurent Blanc,
Jean-Pierre Papin and many others.
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