THE club-versus-country issue is one of the biggest problems in modern football. When clubs pay the players’ wages they are a tad loathe to see said players disappear off on long-haul flights at critical times of the club season and risk getting injured.

In 2001 a big row was brewing over a friendly international match between Australia and France, scheduled to take place on this day in Melbourne.

Led by publicity hungry Arsenal bod David Dein, many of the clubs of those players due to travel for the match decided to try a bit of collective action to get the game called off. The match was preceded in September by France’s friendly away to Chile.

For once, Manchester United were in agreement with Arsenal about the issue. Alex Ferguson said in September: “I think it is ridiculous. We put up with their friendly against Chile earlier this month, but the Australia game is in November when all the top clubs will be in the middle of European campaigns. Suddenly they are asking for our players to be put on 23-hour flights to and from Australia. The French authorities must know that will be so taxing.”

Manchester United and Arsenal were joined by Chelsea, Fulham, Leeds United, Roma, Parma, Juventus, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Olympique Marseille in opposing the match.

Fifa stepped in to try to calm the situation and first asked the French Football Federation to cancel the match. When that was rejected they pushed for the FFF to only select one player each from the top clubs for the trip.

“Last week at the Uefa meeting in Prague, Blatter and Zen-Ruffinen came to ask me if it was possible to cancel that trip to Australia,” said FFF president Claude Simonet. “I told them that the date had been decided a year ago and that nobody had spoken up at the time.

“I said I was within my rights and when they suggested we take only one player per foreign club I said I was not France’s manager.”

Simonet added that Lemerre had told him he did not take orders from foreign coaches.

“The game goes ahead. Some 40,000 tickets have been sold and there are TV rights and contracts which the FFF will respect.”

Frenchman Arsene Wenger showed his colours were more North London than Les Blues with his reaction. He said: “I had hoped that France would see that cancelling the match was the sensible option because nobody else thinks the match is a good thing.

“They have already been to Chile on a long trip from which the players came back with stomach illnesses and were jet lagged.

” I feel that trips like this could work against France in the end.”

Despite a lot of posturing from Dein, Wenger and Ferguson, the match went ahead and finished in a 1-1 draw meaning no one was the winner on the day, least of all football.

Below is a clip from the Socceroos 2006 World Cup campaign, and have a gander here at political correctness taking a beating from Mike Newell on this day in 2006.

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