Gallas needs a ball gag

While the daily entertainment quotient would undoubtedly go down, it's about time for William Gallas to shut his mouth. He already caused enough of a stir with his stories from inside the Arsenal locker room to reportedly be dropped from the squad and lose the armband. That's not enough for Mr. Gallas, however. Now he's aiming to get dropped from the French squad as well.

Earlier today, in what looks to have been leaked from an upcoming autobiography, news filtered out that Gallas has feuds in the France locker room as well. This time it's not over heart or anything like that, it's over respect. Not towards the refs, but from young players to the veterans.

The player whom Gallas had the big problem with is not named explicitly, but there are a couple of clues. First of all, the player is code-named "S". Secondly, the player's age at Euro 2008 was 20. This has led to speculation that the unnamed player is Samir Nasri, a guy who Gallas just can't get away from, either with club or country.

Nasri's (if it is him) crime? He took Thierry Henry's seat on the bus. I tell you what, that is a heinous bit of disrespect, and worthy of losing the respect of all your teams' fans for bringing it up.

The Eurosport article goes a bit further into what Gallas thinks of the new generation of footballers. Given his take on the current crop of teens and young twenty year-olds he's around, I have to say that he's gotta go. Arsenal are obviously dedicated to youth right now, and having a captain who has nothing but contempt for everyone else on the team (save Silvestre) is not going to work out.

Then the question becomes: who takes over the captaincy? It would seem that Wenger has a predilection for Frenchmen and , predictably, he has a lot of choice on the team. Diaby, Sagna, Nasri, Silvestre and Clichy all fit the bill. As well as someone named Francis Coquelin, who has not debuted in the first team yet. Or will it filter down to Almunia? Ol' Bleachy is the vice captain (so Wikipedia tells me) and may have to assume the armband full time until he gets dropped as well.

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