2010 World Cup: France squad go on strike after Nicolas Anelka sent home

With the 2026 World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the United States set to get underway on 11 June, we are taking a look back at an unforgettable World Cup moment: when the France squad went on strike at the 2010 World Cup.

Nicolas Anelka was sent home from the event in South Africa, causing a big blow to the strength of the French squad.

France failed to make it out of the group stages after picking up just one point in three group games, which was pretty staggering for a squad as promising as theirs in 2010.

Nicolas Anelka's France career

Anelka first received the call-up for France in 1997, representing the French under-20s team.

He was already labelled as a promising striker, and many assumed he would be picked for the 1998 World Cup team the following year.

As it happens, he was not selected for this tournament, but he was first on the list for the Euros in 2000, especially since he started to play for the senior team during the 2000 Euros qualifiers.

With this being the first time that he had played for the French national team in a major tournament, it is fairly impressive that he managed to claim the title with them. 

Anelka proved pivotal in several qualifying games leading up to the tournament, and he played well in the main event too.

But at that point, he still was not the key man for France, mainly because he was so young.

Anyway, they still won the tournament, and things were looking good for Anelka and his international career.

The only problem was that Anelka was not exactly killing it at club level, and he bounced around quite a bit because of this.

He failed to really fulfil his talent at any club, which resulted in Anelka being absent from a call-up in both the 2002 and 2006 World Cup tournaments.

However, he was finally picked to be part of the main team for the 2010 World Cup, under the management of Raymond Domenech.

These two always seemed to clash throughout Anelka’s career, which was probably a major reason why he was not picked more for France.

Of course, this was also the tournament where he was famously sent home! But all in all, Anelka played for France 69 times, scoring 14 goals. 

Nicolas Anelka sent home by Raymond Domenech

Anelka was substituted in the game against Mexico at half-time, and according to first-hand accounts and other reports, Anelka had an outburst at the manager in the dressing room during the half-time interval.

The manager, Domenech, was reportedly angry with Anelka for what he called ‘playing out of position’.

Therefore, Anelka was clearly interpreting this as though the manager felt he was responsible for the 1-0 position at half-time.

Of course, we do not know exactly what went on in the dressing room for those 15 minutes.

But what we do know is that Anelka defended himself in spectacular fashion.

As the official recall goes, Anelka said to the manager – “Go f**k yourself”. 

If this was not bad enough, he continued to call the manager a ‘son of a w***e’, which is the rough translation of a pretty intense insult in French!

Furious, Domenech removed Anelka from the game, but that is just half the story.

French Football Federation’s request for an apology

Although Anelka was substituted because of this outburst, he was not actually going to miss the remaining game of the 2010 World Cup.

In fact, he was not even going to be sent home, although things were working behind the scenes that would ultimately lead to his dismissal.

Given that news of this meltdown also spread to the president of the French Football Federation, Anelka was asked to make a formal apology, in public.

This is another interesting part of the story relating to how this all became public knowledge in the first place.

Anyway, Jean-Pierre Escalettes (FFF president), had requested this apology from Anelka.

However, Anelka flat-out refused to make a public apology, which did not go down too well.

Patrice Evra highlighting a ‘traitor’ in the squad

For the 2010 World Cup, the captain was Patrice Evra.

And when he was asked in a media interview about the incident, he did not speak about Anelka, the manager, or the FFF’s president.

Instead, Evra simply claimed that this whole problem had arisen and snowballed into something huge because of a ‘traitor’ in the ranks.

Anelka was banned from the next training camp, and he was subsequently ordered home by the French Football Federation.

Because of his maintained position of refusing to apologize, he was banned from the next 18 international games for France.