Euro 2008 : dumb and dumber...

Too easy to take shots at national coaches ? Sure, but the bad treatment they incur is the only possible justification for their wages.

No need to be fluent in soccer to call Domenech a "fraud" : even Canadian journalists (Globe and Mail) do.

"The Times" seems to find him a bit slow-witted : a perfidious British understatement.

Ten years ago, Aimé Jaquet demonstrated you could be perfectly dumb and nevertheless passable enough a coach to win the World Cup.

French soccer big wigs mistakenly concluded that you had to be dumb to have a chance to win a title and that the dumber, the better the chances ; hence : Lemerre, Santini, Domenech...

The stratyegy sometimes worked, sometimes nearly did, sometimes bombed.

For a simple reason : with preciously few exceptions (an unlikely genius; a dumber act than Lemerre and Domenech put together), national coaches do not matter.

Could we therefore, for a change, hire somebody reasonably articulate and pleasant, rather than the usual source of domestic and international embarrassment ?

Why not a woman, provided she is not the soon-to-be Ms. Domenech ?

(PM)