‘I’m a World Cup and European Championship winner – the Euros is tougher to win’

World Cup and European Championship winner Emmanuel Petit is adamant the latter is the tougher tournament to win.

The Arsenal icon scored the third goal in a 3-0 victory over Brazil in the 1998 World Cup final, held in France. He was then part of the squad that won Euro 2000 in Belgium and the Netherlands thanks to a Golden Goal winner from David Trezeguet.

Petit was part of an illustrious team that included the likes of Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry and current France manager Didier Deschamps. He maintains that the French squad was at its peak during Euro 2000.

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When asked if the 2000 team was superior to the ’98 squad, Petit, speaking to the Mirror ahead of Euro 2024, said: “Yes. Winning the Euros is much more difficult than winning the World Cup.”

The French team faced unexpected criticism following their World Cup triumph in ’98, which added fuel to their desire for continental success. Reflecting on this, Petit said: “We won the World Cup at home, which is difficult to do, but we received so much criticism from people in France, people in the press and former players as well.

“[They were saying] ‘You won because it was organised in France’. We were very upset. When we met up again in the weeks following the World Cup for an international game, we talked together and thought it was unfair.

“We wanted to win the European competition because of that. We wanted to enter football history and shut people’s mouths. We wanted to prove we had the quality to win a tournament as important as the World Cup, which is what we did. When you look at the two tournaments, the games were not the same, the opposition was not the same.

“From the start in the Euros, we had to be 100% on the pitch all the time. We couldn’t afford to think, ‘it’s going to come’. No, we had to play straight away. We played against so many big teams and we won it. We wanted to prove to everyone it was not a surprise that we won the World Cup.”

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To underline Petit’s point, France played South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Denmark in the World Cup group stage, compared with the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Denmark again in the Euros, then a 16-team competition.

In the World Cup knockout stages, they defeated Paraguay with a Golden Goal, Italy on penalties and Croatia in the semis. They then saw off a Brazil side in a state of disarray following the pre-match selection furore surrounding Ronaldo, who was initially left off the team sheet but did start the game.

In the Euros knockout stages, they had to overcome Spain and Portugal before David Trezeguet’s Golden Goal saw off a strong Italy side in Rotterdam.

Emmanuel Petit was speaking on behalf of BetMGM. Play the new £2million Golden Goals game by predicting Euro 2024 scores at betmgm.co.uk. BeGambleAware 18+