Every team needs a scapegoat. Even when things are going well, when the goals are flowing and the wins are racking up, there is always a scapegoat readied to be sacrificed, just in case. France find themselves in the quarter-finals of Euro 2016, unbeaten and largely unscathed. Yet Olivier Giroud has become their scapegoat.
Giroud is everyone’s scapegoat, it seems. At Arsenal he is often the target of an entire support’s pent-up frustrations of the past decade, taking the blame for things that have generally nothing to do with him. By now it’s something the striker must be accustomed to.