LISBON, 13 June 2004 — France captain Marcel Desailly will start on the substitutes’ bench for the Euro 2004 showdown against England in Lisbon today.
Desailly, who picked up a knee injury in the 0-0 draw against Brazil last month, is not fit enough and needs more time to recover, coach Jacques Santini said yesterday
“Marcel will not start tomorrow,” he said. “The tests he took showed that he is still far from the physical shape required to play 90 minutes.”
Playmaker Zinedine Zidane will be captain for the Group B game while the central defensive partnership will be Turin’s Lilian Thuram and Manchester United’s Mickael Silvestre.
“Thuram and Silvestre gave all the guarantees we were looking for during the (1-0) victory over Ukraine last week,” Santini said. “Marcel is recovering well and, as we hope to stay for more than three matches, there will be some time for everyone to play.”
“My knee is aching and I feel I still need to work to be back at my best,” Desailly said.
“Being at 85 percent is not enough to start in a match like tomorrow’s, especially at my age.”
Desailly, 35, will retire after the European Championship.
“I’ll be on the bench and there is very little chance that I’ll play on Sunday,” he said. “But there are five days before the match against Croatia and I hope I’ll be available then.
“If I had recovered in time I would have been on the front line tomorrow but unfortunately it is not like that.”
The Chelsea libero said he understood the coach’s decision to leave him out for such an important match. Asked by a journalist if he was disappointed, Desailly said: “If I answer ‘yes’ you are going to print it on the front page tomorrow.”
