Football: Desailly out to turn patience into passion

Marseilles provides a special stage tonight for French flair to turn snipers into supporters

MARCEL DESAILLY is a comfortable person, usually. Everything about him, on and off the football field, is graceful, relaxed, reassuring, thoughtful. At 29, he has the charisma and the film-star looks of a Carl Lewis or a young Muhammad Ali. For six years, with Marseilles, Milan and France, he has been one of the world's outstanding central defenders.

Desailly was as graceful as ever when I met him, but not comfortable - he admitted to being "gene" and "agace" [troubled and irritated] by the relentless criticism of the French team in the French press. "We are professionals. We are not kids out of college. Professionals need competition. You have to remember that for two years the French team has played only friendly games. It's true that we have not played particularly well. We have constantly had to say to the French public: `Wait and see. wait and see. It will be different when the World Cup comes.' All I can say to you today is [he shrugs his shoulders]... `wait and see'."

This is a huge day for all the French players, their first World Cup game in the French World Cup, in Group C, against South Africa. If they fail again, as a team, to perform up to their individual reputations, they can no longer hide from the eloquent scorn of the French press, and the almost fatalistic disappointment of the French public.

It is an especially big week for Marcel Desailly. He returns today to the Stade Velodrome in Marseilles, the stadium where he made his reputation, and the city in which he was brought up. On Monday, he signed a four-year contract with Chelsea, ending a glittering career with Milan, including two years when they were undisputably the greatest club side in the world.

I spoke to Desailly at the French team's headquarters, a chateau 30 miles south-west of Paris, which has been transformed (stunningly) into the Centre Technique National du Football, the players sat at tables labelled with their names, as if at a school careers convention.

A couple of days ago, when criticism reached a new peak of scorn (following a vacuous 1-0 victory over Finland), the French coach, Aime Jacquet, threatened to eject the press from Clairefontaine. But here we all were, conducting polite interviews before writing words of puzzlement and foreboding.

L'Equipe, the great French sports daily newspaper, has been especially scathing about Jacquet's tactics and his apparent intention to play three central attackers - Youri Djorkaeff, Stephane Guivarc'h and Christophe Dugarry - but no true wingers. This is yet another bizarre resemblance between the French preparations for France 98 and the English preparations for 1966. Could the taciturn, media unfriendly Jacquet be the French Alf Ramsey?

Desailly, a hugely popular figure in France, remains exempt from the criticism. The likely French back-four - Lillian Thuram, Desailly, Laurent Blanc and Bixente Lizarazu - is one of the best and most experienced in the competition. "We are happy together," said Desailly. "Especially LoLo [Laurent Blanc] and myself. It has been the same back line for two years now, since the European Championship. Defensively, we are comfortable. What we have lacked is the edge of imagination, of disponibilite [availability] when going forward. But that's the kind of thing which professional players produce, can only produce in a competitive game.

"This is what wounds us about the criticism. As if, somehow, the World Cup mattered less to the players than it does to the fans or the press. I can tell you, this is what I have been waiting for. This is what all the players have been waiting for."

On his pounds 4.5m transfer to Chelsea, Desailly was upbeat, but he did not hide a trace of sadness at leaving Milan. "With my enthusiasm, but also my tactical awareness, I think I will be in the list of the `good foreigners' in the Premier League. I had other offers, better offers. I could have gone to Atletico Madrid or Liverpool. But I was impressed with Chelsea, that they wanted me very badly. I was impressed with their victory in the European Cup-Winners' Cup, with their ambition. I was impressed with the kind of players they have been signing, players in the 28-30 age group like me - Casiraghi, Laudrup - who are ready to play at their peak.

"I want to win the European Champions' League again (he has a 1993 medal with Marseilles and 1994 with Milan) and so why not with an English club? What I am especially looking forward to in England is the passion of the fans. I'm the kind of player who needs that."

It was Michel Platini who once said that, in France, there are no supporters, only spectators. There are two exceptions to the rule: Lens and Marseilles.

"We are all happy to be playing the first game in Marseilles," Desailly said. "Most of the team has once played, or still plays, for the club. The fans know us. We hope they are going to get behind us, and support us to the end, even if, say, it's 0-0 at half-time. We need them to be passionate but also patient."

The French fans have been patient for a long time. What they desperately want in Marseilles today is something to be passionate about.