Zidane in a hurry for England D-Day
France star Zinedine Zidane is in a hurry to play England in what he calls a D-Day match in the Euro 2004 championships in Portugal on June 13.
France star Zinedine Zidane is in a hurry to play England in what he calls a D-Day match in the Euro 2004 championships in Portugal on June 13.
The FIFA World Player of the Year is keen to throw off the disappointment of a calamitous end of season with Real Madrid and he sees the England match as the ideal way of starting afresh.
"It's good we start with England, it means you have to be on top of the job from the kick-off," he said at the France training camp.
"When you start with an easy match it sometimes means you are not fully concentrated. We know we have to win this match, we have to be ready for D Day."
He said Real's run of defeats had been hard to accept.
"I hate losing but we seemed to get into a spiral. It became a psychological problem. We couldn't stop thinking we might lose," he said.
Five league defeats in a row meant Real, knocked out of the Champions League by Monaco in the quarter-finals, finished without a trophy for the first time in five years.
They finished fourth in the Liga and have to qualify for next season's Champions League in August.
"So I'm in a hurry to start Euro 2004, get my teeth into something new, and that goes for all of us here."
He promised that France were keen to make amends for their disastrous 2002 World Cup when the 1998 winners could draw only one match -- 0-0 with Uruguay -- and lost to Senegal and Denmark to go home without scoring a goal.
"We don't want to rake over old ground but we know what we have to do -- be ready for D Day."
"We've got some world-class players, someone like Robert Pires, and we're a compact block."
Zidane missed the first two matches in the 2002 World Cup with a thigh strain and Pires was unable to go to the tournament because of injury.
France, the 2000 European champions, can count on Pires, Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Sylvain Wiltord from English champions Arsenal.
The strike force for a friendly work-out against Andorra at nearby Montpellier on Friday was made up of Henry, Manchester United's Louis Saha and Juventus' David Trezeguet.
Juventus full-back Lilian Thuram was moved to partner Chelsea's William Gallas in the centre of defence to make up for injured captain Marcel Desailly.