France Might Face Early World Cup Exit After Loss to Mexico

PARIS, June 18, 2010— -- "Shameful," "Appalling," "Impostors" were just a few of the newspaper headlines the French confronted at newsstands today, headlines that described their team's disastrous performance at the World Cup in South Africa Thursday night.

France lost to Mexico 2-0 in the second Group A game and faces an early World Cup exit.

This was Mexico's first-ever victory over France.

On French streets Friday morning, the previous night's loss was the main topic of conversation. In Paris, passersby could be heard discussing the game as they talked and walked with cell phones glued to their ears.

"Hopeless" one woman told ABC News, when asked for her reaction, pointing her thumb downward.

"I'm very disappointed. I was very sad at the end of the game," said soccer fan Julien Lapalus. "But I'm not really surprised. We knew they were not going to do better than this."

The French team's poor performances, and the controversial and unpopular French coach Raymond Domenech, has fed a disenchantment among French soccer fans that has lingered for years.

And Thursday night, the breakup was complete.

French fans had hoped for a spurt of enthusiasm on behalf of their national team after a scoreless and uninspired tie game against Uruguay the previous week. But it never came. The arrogance shown by coach Domenech and some of his key players exasperated French fans.

"We don't feel there is a desire to play" on behalf of Les Bleus, said Celine Morin, in Levallois-Perret, a northwest suburb of Paris.

"It's a fiasco. It is just the continuation of what we've been seeing over the past few years, with the elimination of France in the first round of the Euro 2008 championship," said David Laouenan. "I was actually quite pleased that they lost last night. May be it will put some of the players back in their place."

"There is no team cohesion. There is no team at all, as a matter of fact. We have great players -- most of them play for the best Europeans teams, but they can't play together," Julien Vasseur explained.