Vieira - we lacked strong personalities (Allsport)

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France midfielder Patrick Vieira believes the vanquished world champions lacked players with strong enough personalities to help them battle out of their World Cup crisis.

Les Bleus crashed out in the first round of the tournament in the Far East without winning a game or scoring a goal against their Group A rivals Senegal, Uruguay and Denmark.

Things started to go badly almost immediately for the French with the loss of superstar Zinedine Zidane to injury on the eve of the tournament quickly followed by a shock opening day defeat to unfancied Senegal.

Zidane hurt his thigh in a friendly against South Korea which saw him sit out the opening two games and be little more than a passenger in the last against Denmark.

It barely got better for the world and European champions and their early exit has cast doubt on the future of coach Roger Lemerre, who has been given until July 5 by his French Football Federation bosses to decide whether he wants to see out his contract which is due to end in June 2004.

"His (Lemerre's )tactics were the same as during the Euro 2000 and it worked well then," Vieira told L'Equipe today.

"But now it is true to admit that it was difficult to keep this tactical scheme without Zizou (Zidane). Roger's current situation is regrettable, (but) saying that he was not the man for the situation is too much.

"He has made mistakes of course and he has also his share of responsibility in this situation like us the players and all the staff members.

"But it is also true to say that three players with strong personalities - Didier Deschamps, Laurent Blanc and Bernard Lama - were missing.

"They all retired at the same time and it was bad for the group (the France squad).

"We have to admit that our last preparation games were not good enough, but everyone kept things to themselves and did not share their doubts with the rest of the group.

"With the players I have just mentioned, I am sure we would have organised meetings to talk about what was not going right."

Vieira said he still had not got over the disappointment and felt very frustrated when he saw which teams had reached the quarter-finals.

"We really missed our World Cup," he said. "We can talk about bad luck, the lack of concentration, but we missed everything.

"We had three games and time to catch up but we were unable to bounce back even if everyone wanted it, we never managed to go beyond our limits.

"It is true to say that physically we were all rotten, but I don't think this is the only reason.

"The England national team players also played a lot this season and they are in the quarter-finals.

"Maybe we were too sure about our strength, we thought we were capable because we felt very strong.

"But we did not focus on the right objective, we went there to win the World Cup whereas the real aim should have been to clear the first round hurdle."

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