French coach Raymond Domenech remained upbeat despite dropping home points in a scoreless World Cup qualifying draw with Ireland, although Brian Kerr was clearly the happier of the two managers.
Ireland took the match to France and could have won had their luck been better. But the match finished all-square – thanks largely to the exploits of Shay Given in the Irish goal and his opposite number Fabien Barthez.
Afterwards Domenech revealed he was happy with his players, while also praising the Irish team.
"As a whole, we showed a little bit more than against Israel," he said. "For me, this brings some satisfaction - even though we should never be satisfied with a scoreless draw.
"The match in Cyprus on Wednesday will be very important. We must improve again. This match was quite well balanced. Ireland have very good players, and they played well and caused us problems."
Brian Kerr was the far happier of the two afterwards though and said: "I would have settled for a point before the game - but obviously I could not say that yesterday. It was very hard work. We had a game plan and the players stuck to it and delivered it. That was an excellent performance through the team from back to front.
"The game plan was to keep possession, not give the ball away cheaply, to work hard all over the pitch, to pass well and to take the chances when we got them - that was the one area where we fell down.
"But we have now five points from our three games and we are happy with that. We took a brave decision in wanting these away games with Switzerland and France early and the two points we have got keeps the group alive for us."
