Shite is the new good

'What do you mean no more nutmegs?'

Tactical trends borne of tournaments are nothing new and it’s fitting that one has yet again emerged from the denizens of France 2016. And make no mistake, it’s our absolute favourite.

Football rentre à la maison

Fabien Barthez, Laurent Blanc and Zinedine Zidane
pose for the cameras in 1998

If England 96 was when football came home, France 98 was when it got a radical new haircut, swaggered into the living room having not been seen for a couple of months, nailed the cat to the TV, threw all the family photos out of a top-floor window and then left straight through the wall, joyfully, ferociously, shrugging as it went. Or so your faulty memory would have you believe. Or would it?