The Football Insider With Mikael Silvestre: The Club Vs Country Battle Will Never End

This is always one of the strangest times of the season with the league action suddenly stopping and the players heading off to play for their countries.

Is it a waste of time? From a players perspective the answers you will get to that question will be very mixed.

I loved playing for France and it was always a proud moment to get on the pitch for my nation and take on some of the best teams from around the world.

And if you look at someone like Antoine Griezmann you will see a player who has never let anything stop him from playing for France. The guy would run through brick walls to put on the shirt.

But on the other hand there was a time when English players were not happy to be playing friendlies at all. The atmosphere in and around the squad was pretty toxic to say the least. Times have changed on that front now and they seem a content squad with bags of talent.

You also have the clubs of not really wanting players to put themselves through 90 minutes of action when there is so much on the line in the closing weeks of the season.

At United, Sir Alex Ferguson made no secret that he wanted players to stay in Manchester and the rule was pretty much that you could go if you only played 45 minutes. If you fancied more than that he was pretty forceful in telling you that you would be staying at home!

The whole club versus country situation puts players in a very tricky situation as the national team has friends in it and you always have your family wanting to watch you play international football.

But your club pays your wages and you have a contract with them – there have been so many fights around the subject over the years you do wonder if there needs to be some sort of clearer agreement to prevent it happening.

It is crazy to think we are not that far away from the World Cup and time really has flown since the last one – with football pretty much year-round now there is never any time to properly take a step back and a break.

There is a lot of optimism in France around this squad of players with what looks to be just the right balance of older players and young talent.

Michael Olise is performing so well at the moment and if he carries on developing in the coming year at the rate he has then there is no stopping him from becoming a global superstar. He scored an awesome goal against Croatia – combining technique and power- and you have to rate my nation's chances going forward.

The teams who made up the semifinalists at the last Euros will be there at the end with a chance at the World Cup.

In South America you will definitely see Argentina perform well but this time I am not so sure on Brazil and how strong they will be.

(Former French defender Mikael Silvestre won five Premier League titles with Manchester United. He was also part of the United team that won the 2008 Champions League title)

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