I don't know why I'm surprised by these Raymond Domenech decisions anymore.

Actually, come to think of it, I'm not surprised by these Raymond Domenech decisions anymore.

Raymond lost a DM, a center/leftback, and a rightback this week to injury Lassana Diarra, Julien Escudé and Bakary Sagna.

My plan for this post was to give you videos to ask you want you think of PSG's discovery, Guillaume Hoarau, who scored two goals today. (One was a penalty, the other a header.) He's PSG's top scorer this season. I think I read they paid either 500K or 800K Euros for him.

I wanted to post videos of the goals, but TVGolo seems to have given up the ghost.

Reader Doumé left this comment in a previous post:

Laurie,
Speaking of Nico's double, I couldn't find the goals anywhere, it seems Youtube and Dailymotion forbid highlights. Every time I click on something, it's a still picture with a crappy link - sometimes to a porn site, but I didn't think Anelka did that kind of highlights.

First off, my pet peeve. Why the hell is Patrick Vieira on the list? You know he's just going to get injured before the game, and even if he doesn't, he'll be injured in 2010. So why are we not seeing somebody like Mathieu Flamini, or (maybe Abou Diaby) instead?

Remember these music videos? I came across a new one the other day and couldn't resist sharing, though some of you may have already seen this one.

"Un Raymond d'Amitié: Raymond et Yoann" - Zizou is replaced in Raymond's heart.

There was some talk after the Tunisia game about Gourcuff's attempts not always successful to utilize Zidane-like footwork so he could really claim the role of "New Zidane" for himself.

Perhaps practice makes perfect? Because on Saturday against Toulouse he made it work. Said Yoann:

"When the ball arrived at my feet, I had two real options; to pass the ball laterally or backward," Gourcuff explained, "But I saw this other solution.

If past performance is an indicator of future results, then the decision by the French Football Federation (FFF) to keep Raymond Domenech as the manager of France's National Football team is cause for concern.

Domenech is getting some things right, such as playing Henry, Gourcuff, and Ribery as attackers, and featuring Toulalan in midfield; but he continues to get some big decisions wrong, like playing out-of-form defenders; and those poor decisions are reflected in the qualifying-campaign points total.

First goal. Is it possible for a defender to screw up any worse than this? I don't think so. And why the heck didn't Mandanda stop it? (My co-blogger Chris and I were discussing the team the other day, and I said that we needed to replace the central defenders and probably once defensive midfielder.

I almost missed this game! In my mind it was tomorrow with the WC qualifiers. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Jean Pierre for leaving the comment about the "game tonight." As it was, I only missed 25 mintues.

Good stream is here. In Arabic. http://iraqgoals.com/en/ch2.html Or it was a good stream it just cut out on me.

It it game day. What does this mean? It means leave streams and thoughts in the comments.

Game starts at 20h40 according to l'Equipe, so I'm assuming that's France time. This would be 11:40 Pacific and 2:40 Eastern.

Probable starting lineup is:

L'équipe probable : Mandanda - Sagna, Boumsong, Abidal, Evra - Vieira, Toulalan - Ribéry, Gourcuff, Malouda - Henry.

All righty, a few changes since the last post. (Thanks to everybody who's been keeping our readers up to date in the comments!)

First, Lasssana Diarra is forfait with a left knee inflammation. He hasn't yet been replaced. There was talk about bringing in Mathieu Flamini, but Flamini himself is not at 100%, so for now Raymond isn't bringing in anybody.

Raymond Domenech unveiled the list today for the WC qualifier vs. Romania and the friendly against Tunisia.

Biggest surprise for me? No Samir Nasri. Raymond's reason? "Samir is back playing but he is still not fully fit." And of course it has nothing to do with the fact that Yoann Gourcuff took that #10 role that was expected to be Samir's and made it his own instead.

As has been mentioned in the comments, there has been a lot of criticism in the French press lately about the way the FFF and Domenech are running things, most of it coming from former French players. The biggest surprise? Zinedine Zidane, on Canal+. (I've looked for videos with no luck.

Sensitive young souls, cover your eyes. Everybody else? Please join me in wishing a Happy (slightly belated) Birthday to Noémie Lenoir, Mrs. Claude Makélélé

Noemie was born on September 19, 1979, 29 years ago yesterday.

(More photos below the jump.

It was not a great day for French teams in the Champions League. Marseille lost to Liverpool 2-1 after taking an early lead, and Bordeaux got decimated by Chelsea, 4-0. (And it could have been worse.)

The only bright side? Florent Malouda and Nicolas Anelka both scored for Chelsea.