French football boss sacks entire international squad for match

Paris - Recently-appointed French international football manager Laurent Blanc will not be selecting any of the 23 players who went on strike during France's disastrous World Cup campaign. They won't play during an upcoming friendly against Norway.

The decision was taken during today's French Football Federation meeting in Paris, Le Figaro has announced. News of the unexpectedly harsh collective sanctions comes as a shock not only to French football, but to international football as a whole. Almost all the players went on a training strike on June 20 in protest against the sending home of striker Nicolas Anelka for abusive language during the half-time pause of a previous match. France were eliminated from the competition shortly afterward. The decision means that the squad for the friendly match scheduled against Norway on Aug. 12 will be composed of almost 100 percent new faces. A question mark remains over young and talented striker Karim Benzema however. Although he wasn't selected for the World Cup squad, he is currently implicated in an underage prostitute scandal and the public is demanding that he be excluded from playing in the future.