SAINT-DENIS, France -- Didier Deschamps did not want to play the villain. But neither was he going to play the push-over. If he's a fan of The Wire, he would know that being the coach of the French national team is a lot like the story Tommy Carcetti tells about being mayor. You get served breakfast in a beautiful silver bowl most mornings but, when you look inside, there's a pile of excrement.
And you have to eat it.
Every day.
That's what happens when you're the coach of a host nation that too often has been less than the sum of its talented parts, that had to endure player revolts and Raymond Domenech and a parliamentary investigation.