If England players thought it was bad to be comprehensively beaten by Chile on Friday, they should take a look at what’s happening across the Channel.

The current France squad — a bulk of whom play in the Premier League — were cast as one of ‘worst teams in history’ in one of the country’s newspapers after losing the first leg of their World Cup play-off against Ukraine.

Les Bleus were beaten 2-0 in Kiev as Roman Zozulya and Andriy Yarmolenko netted a goal apiece. A game that saw Arsenal centre back Laurent Koscielny sent off for palming Oleksandr Kucher in the face having given away a penalty earlier in the game, and a wholly underwhelming showing from the rest of his France team-mates.

French paper L’Equipe penned a story headlined ‘Les Bleus in a nightmare’, and wrote that, although Didier Deschamps’ side have a chance in Tuesday’s return leg, they would ‘do well to just draw’ based on Friday night’s performance.

The article then asked if this France side were the ‘worst in history’ and claimed the most worrying thing about the abject showing in eastern Europe was that Ballon d’Or hopeful Franck Ribery’s influence was ‘reduced to nothing’. ‘A real black evening to forget,’ concluded the paper.

Premier League stars Hugo Lloris, Patrice Evra, Koscielny, Samir Nasri, Loic Remy, Mathieu Debuchy and Olivier Giroud started the game for Les Bleus, and Le Monde singled the England-based players out for some scathing criticism in their report.

‘Didier Deschamps opted for no fewer than seven residents of the England “elite” players,’ they wrote. ‘It was supposed to be a device to make the difference, with Samir Nasri as the playmaker.’

L’Equipe was similarly unimpressed with Nasri and the Premier League contingent, rating the Manchester City midfielder at just three out of ten — the same as the irascible Koscielny.

Amid the doom and gloom though, Deschamps believes his side can put the woeful performance behind them and reach the World Cup finals in Brazil this summer

‘It was just the first step. There is a second step,’ Deschamps said. ‘We struggled because they put a lot of commitment into the game.’

The two sides go head-to-head once again on Tuesday night at the Stade de France in Paris. Whoever Deschamps picks for that game will hope the home support, rather than on their backs.

—Daily Mail