France and Uruguay pull off goal-less draw

Johannesburg, Jun 12: After the opening match of the 19th FIFA World Cup between the hosts South Africa and Mexico ended in an exciting 1-1 draw, France and Uruguay played out a goal-less draw in their opening match.

French put up a poor show and failed to break the South American's defence system in the Green Point stadium on Friday, Jun 11 night. This was especially disappointing as the team failed despite having to be up against 10 men for the last nine minutes as substitute Nicolas Lodeiro was sent off.

France did not have the support of its forward Thierry Henry as well as Chelsea's Florent Malouda. The team, however, comprised of Bayern Munich's Franck Ribery and Lyon's Sidney Govou, who put up a great fight against their fans' pessimism.

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"It is frustrating not to have won the match. Perhaps we weren't calm enough or quite precise enough in the final phase. Uruguay defended very well and they have quality in that regard. We tried and in the way we approached the game we did a great deal but we weren't able to finish our chances," said France coach Raymond Domenech.

Uruguay, on the other hand, failed to deliver on the promise of great attack lead by the Diego Forlan and Luis Suare duo, who stockpiled goals for their clubs. The South Americans used Suarez at every opportunity, but the French keeper Hugo Lloris knew how to guard his territory.

This outcome creates an interesting situation in the Group A with South Africa also sharing the points in their opening game with Mexico.

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