France perfected beauty -- who will inherit the reins?

	In the late '90s, the Zinedine Zidane-led French national team was the epitome of artistic, creative soccer. Stu Forster/Getty Image

By Greg Lalas, Special to SI.com

National teams, like everything else in life, go in cycles. They rise and fall with the regularity of skirt hems, sometimes experiencing a "Golden Age" (think Ferenc Puskas' Magnificent Magyars), other times enduring a dark age (think Hungary today).

Right now, the Czechs and the Croats are up; the Colombians and the Russians are down. Mexico and the U.S. are on the rise; Portugal and Norway are on the decline. But the most interesting trajectory of all, to a thirtysomething like me, is France -- les grandes Bleus who, finally, it seems, are on the wane.

I came of age with the French team. They taught me the true, sophisticated nature of the so-called beautiful game, because for the past decade, they have practiced jogo bonito even more vividly than the originators, Brazil. France has shown what it means to love the ball, to wink at conventional wisdom and to search out the original and the creative. In the late '90s, the French were artists in a sea of functionaries -- and trust me, without the likes of Zinedine Zidane, there would be no Ronaldinho.

That's why Zidane's name stands out from the other 736 filed with FIFA on Monday by the 32 World Cup coaches. Sadly, the 34-year-old Frenchman will hang up his cleats after Germany. Simply put, he is the most significant player of the past decade. He is his generation's Diego Maradona, and 10 years from now, we will call Ronaldinho his generation's Zidane.

The announcement of Zidane's retirement has produced the predictable onslaught of "Au revoir et merci" articles and homemade YouTube.com highlights. They are nice tributes that might make you think Zidane is on par with De Gaulle or Ghandi or Jerry Lewis. And maybe he is. After all, he has played some of the most beautiful football any of us has ever seen, won every trophy imaginable and done it all with uncommon class.

But Zidane's retirement and the 2006 World Cup also mark the end of the French era in soccer. It is the twilight of a generation. So please extend my au revoir et merci also to his similarly glorious and graceful comrades-in-Bleus who are about to go gamely into that good night: Lilian Thuram, Patrick Vieira, Claude Makélélé, Fabien Barthez, Silvain Wiltord. And don't forget Robert Pires, Youri Djorkaeff and Bixente Lizarazu, none of whom fit into French manager Raymond Domenech's plans, or Didier Deschamps, Marcel Desailly or Emmanuel Petit, all of whom have called it quits in the past few years.

Reread all those names. Pretty impressive, isn't it? This summer, we will bid adieu to one of the greatest national collections ever.

But before anyone gets all teary and reaches for the Kleenex like we're in a therapist's office, let's remember that soccer abhors a vacuum, and already there are some new teams ready to rush in. The Ukraine has made impressive strides recently, boasting, of course, AC Milan's (or maybe Chelsea's) Andriy Shevchenko and other players in Europe's biggest leagues. Poland topped its qualifying group and has one of the most cohesive outfits going to Germany. From South America, Paraguay has now qualified for three straight World Cup finals and has experienced pros placed all around the world.

But two teams seem on the verge of greatness, ready to make the leap from undercard to headliner: Spain and Mexico.

I know, I know, I'm loco to say that Spain is not a headliner. After all, they're Spain -- as in La Liga and Real Madrid and Barcelona and Butragueño and di Stefano, etc. But let me point something out: The Spanish national team has won exactly one major trophy: the European Championship -- in 1964! Other than that, nada. In the World Cup, it has finished fourth once -- in 1950.

In other words, it's about time Spain did something. And this might be its time. This year's squad is loaded and balanced, with light-it-up goal-scorers such as Raúl and Fernando Torres and smart defenders such as Carles Puyol and Míchel Salgado. And if Xavi is healthy, Spain has the midfield general it has always lacked.

Mexico has been threatening to break through the door for decades, it seems. But los Tricolores keep shooting themselves in the foot. Finally, though, in '05, they did something, finishing fourth at the Confederations Cup, including a defeat of Brazil. Then, last fall, Mexico won the Under-17 World Championships.

Mexican club teams have made their mark internationally, most recently in South America's Copa Libertadores. And for the first time since Hugo Sánchez's Spanish sojourn, Mexican players are heading overseas: most notably Rafael Márquez at Barcelona, Jared Borgetti at Bolton and Guillermo Franco at Villarreal.

It's like someone finally whacked the fútbol piñata hard enough to let the world enjoy all the sweets. Mark my words, people -- Mexico will do some damage in Germany. And maybe, with a little luck, it might be the next France.