Hello and welcome to episode three of our six-part summer series, The Totally Football Show presents Zonal Marketing, to coincide with the release of the book of the same name by Michael Cox, who joins us once again.

Hi, Ian. Hello. We are also joined by Julianne Laurene. No stranger to

telling us about French international success over the past 12 months, regrettably. But today, we're

going back 19 years to look at France's victorious Euro 2000 winning side. Jules, set the scene.

What were you up to in the summer of 2000?

I was still a very young man, Ian.

And there was a lot of optimism in the country going into the euros, obviously, because

of the win in 1998.

And the one had never done the double in that way, World Cup first and then European

Championship. So I think at that time there was a lot of people quite excited about the tournament

coming up and quite optimistic that France would do well. Now, Coxy, this book is all about

chapters of European history. We would have thought that when we looked at France, we'd be looking

at France 98 or France 98 and France 2000, but we're just looking at the French 2000 team. Why is that?

I just think they're a much better team. I mean, in terms of the 11, it's pretty similar. But then you see the difference in attackers.

98, the team was overshadowed by the fact they didn't have this really prolific striker. Obviously they beat Brazil in the final.

But the focus was initially as much on Ronaldo and what happened to him as much as it was on the France side.

And they came in 2000, a completely different side, a lot more attacking players, a lot more attacking flair.

And I think they were just from the outset, and holland were kind of the neutral's

favourites and i think there was a kind of unusual level of happiness amongst everyone that they beat

italy in the final obviously a very defensive italy side yeah and in 1998 i mean in the book cucks

you say that france won the world cup by essentially playing an Italian style.

The other major difference was the striker, Jules, Stefan Givarch,

...