Love affair over for Henry and France

What the sorcerer told his apprentice Karim Benzema could only be guessed at but it did not take much imagination to presume the old hero was instructing the 20-year-old to keep the faith because his time with Les Bleus would surely come. The poignant scene symbolised the passing of a torch, the acknowledgment that one great era for French football had just died and that Benzema represented its rich future.

Whether Henry, at 30 increasingly injury-prone and battle weary, would be part of that future was left unclear as he shrugged about wanting to let the dust settle on France's ignominious exit.

"Yes, of course, I want to continue," he said. "I had already said that it had crossed my mind to retire but I am here. I don't know what is going to happen but I am going to reflect on what I am going to do."

If it was his farewell, he certainly deserved better than seeing it marked by one decisive touch, a deflection off his outstretched leg from a free-kick by Daniele de Rossi which sealed Italy's 2-0 win.

Yet, all around him a sense of finality reigned. Claude Makelele and Lilian Thuram emerged to say they felt it a fitting moment to announce their international retirements and with

Patrick Vieira, Willy Sagnol and Gregory Coupet tipped to follow suit, you couldn't help feeling sad that it should all have ended quite so calamitously for them.

So who better to raise the spirits than good old Raymond Domenech. You had to hand it to him. When Steve McClaren presided over an English footballing debacle at Wembley, he did so skulking sheepishly beneath a brolly. Yet when the French boss did the same last night, he just shrugged and thought, what the heck, this is just the right time to propose marriage to his TV presenter girlfriend.

Magnifique! You're being grilled about your professional future live on air so you produce the most glorious diversionary tactic. "I have only one plan at the moment, it is to marry Estelle (Denis), and it is only this evening that I ask for her hand in marriage," intoned Domenech. "It is in moments like these that one has need of everyone, and I need her."

Ah, bless his theatrical socks. We'll miss a bloke who's always come across as being as mad as cheese but one suspects Les Bleus won't. Because if his team were abject, the old ham's last stand was even worse. Yes, he could moan about the misfortune of losing Franck Ribery with a knee injury early on but there was nothing unlucky about the game's pivotal moment midway through the first half.

If you're going to gamble on playing a left back, Eric Abidal, at centre half and dispense with the 142-cap experience of one of the game's finest ever centre backs, Thuram, then you can't complain when the understudy gets caught out by a long ball to a clever centre forward Luca Toni, panics and then clatters into the back of him, not only giving away a penalty but getting himself sent off.

After Andrea Pirlo's penalty forcing France to chase the game, what on earth possessed Domenech then to take off his attack-minded playmaker, Samir Nasri, and bring on Jean-Alain Boumsong, a Charlie Carioli of a defender who, Newcastle fans will attest, could never win you a game but could easily lose one for you?

Game over - and that was before a 62-minute strike from De Rossi settled it. Without ever looking completely comfortable, Italy's only real moment of alarm came when a rumour sweept the fans suggesting that Romania had equalised in Berne against Holland, fuelling panic they might snatch the winner to eliminate both Italy and France.

False alarm; the Dutch had in fact gone two up.

With Gennaro Gattuso spraying water over his team-mates on the touchline like a Grand Prix winner, all the old Italian swagger just flooded back. "We've rediscovered the world champions," Italian football federation president Giancarlo-Abete boomed. A mite premature perhaps with Spain looming on Sunday?

But just like their slow-starting 1982 and 2006 world champions, the sweet timing of their run seems ominous. However, after two bookings, Gattuso is suspended on Sunday and, more critically, so is Pirlo, whose excellence in the deep-lying playmaking role can't be so easily replicated.

Yet though this was Italy's night, it somehow felt like France's too, an occasion to applaud one last time some of a rare generation. Someone noted what a shame it was that one of the most unsung, yet most able of holding midfielders never did win a major trophy with Les Bleus but Makelele just beamed: "To wear France's colours, that's my trophy."

And as the Chelsea man thought of France's seam of young talent, from Benzema, who'd stood out last night amid French mediocrity, to Ribery, still only 24, he felt everything would be all right as long as they stuck to the old motto which his generation had sworn by: "On doit tous mourir". . . 'We all live together'.

"A new generation can take the reins and come together. I am with them," said Makelele. All it needs now is for Domenech to resign and get Estelle to the church on time. Which reminds me. I hope she said yes or it really was a bad night for Ray.