Lights out at midnight for Les Bleus ahead of Euro 2016

Paris (AFP) – French coach Didier Deschamps has imposed a lights out at midnight regime in the team base as he prepares his players to launch the European Championship finals on Friday, according to striker Olivier Giroud.

“He (Deschamps) doesn’t want any music after midnight so the players have to leave the games room,” Giroud told Europe 1 radio on Tuesday, three days ahead of the opening match against Romania in Paris.

The games room is where the players “let themselves go a bit” each night, said Giroud who with the other 22 squad members are confined to the base at Clairefontaine near Paris.

“We go there in the evening after dinner to have fun,” he said. “There is a mixing table for music, ping-pong tables, pinball machines and table football.”

The French Football Federation has been running a “Proud To Be Blue” advertising campaign ahead of the tournament in a bid to get support behind the team.

Up to 10,000 people went to watch their training sessions when they were in the southwestern town of Biarritz last week. But scandals such as Karim Benzema’s exclusion over his role in a sextape blackmail attempt have tainted the team’s image.