Blanc bemoans lack of finishing

Paris :  New coach Laurent Blanc bemoaned France's lack of punch up front after they slumped to a 1-0 home defeat by Belarus in Euro 2012 qualifying on Friday.

"We cannot say we have players who know how to score goals," Blanc told reporters after the Group D match.

"We know we have the players to keep the ball but we don't have the players able to make the difference in the last 25 metres."

Blanc, who took over from Raymond Domenech after a woeful France were knocked out of the World Cup in the first round in June, acknowledged the players were at a low ebb.

"It is a difficult time, nothing is going our way and we have to fight this," he said.

"It is hard to see positive things when you lose. Even if you like your team, they have to score and they did not."

To add to his problems Blanc is expected to be without forwards Louis Saha and Loic Remy for Tuesday's qualifier in Bosnia.

"I will have to make tough choices because we lost Loic and Louis [tonight]," said Blanc. "Remy's injury seems serious, he felt violent pain in his groin.

Injury woes

"Louis felt sharp pain in his calf [after coming on as a second-half substitute]. Both players are very doubtful."

The hosts largely controlled the game but there was a palpable lack of creativity in attacking areas that frustrated Blanc's hopes of banishing memories of the World Cup debacle with a rousing performance.

"We've created a sensation," said Belarus coach Bernd Stange.

"The first 10 minutes we started badly, we were a bit scared. But we weren't lucky. We deserve this victory."

With key creative players Yoann Gourcuff, Franck Ribery and Samir Nasri either suspended or injured, Blanc opted for a 4-4-2 system and handed the captain's armband to Chelsea winger Florent Malouda for the first time.

There were 74,000 fans at the Stade de France, despite the anger provoked by events at the World Cup, but the home side began with a timorousness that was perhaps understandable given the lack of international experience in the team.

Malouda and Jeremy Menez, the two wide men, were both guilty of dropping too deep and playing too narrowly, with strikers Guillaume Hoarau and Loic Remy subsequently starved of service.

Set-pieces initially proved more productive territory than the slick football Blanc wants the team to adopt and Remy stooped to head a left-wing corner narrowly wide of the back post in the 17th minute.