28C sunshine Thursday, 14C rain on Saturday. High summer to low autumn in one fell swoop. Otherwise a quiet week. La bienheureuse spent two days in Brussels while I laboured away at the keyboard. Football provided light relief. Much breast-beating and soul-searching in France last weekend following Les Bleus abject defeat in Vienna, but Domenech received a temporary stay of execution with an altogether more positive performance in Paris against Serbia on Wednesday. Decent game, though for once I was wishing I'd watched the England game instead.
England's new hero was back at it again yesterday on the domestic front, setting up the best footballing side in the world for an unusually comfortable win in the north-west yesterday. Meanwhile Les Gones made rather harder work of beating Nice at Gerland last night. Today's headline in l'Equipe says Nice were volé - robbed, principally by a linesman flagging for an extremely harsh penalty in injury time which handed Lyon the 3-2 win. The same linesman had earlier upset Nice by raising his flag then lowering it during the free kick which resulted in the equaliser. Not that OL's win was undeserved. Somewhat outplayed and 2-0 down in the first half, in the second they made enough chances to have won comfortably before they eventually did. Highly entertaining game, all in all.
