Now that the French national team failed to defeat the South African team by more than five goals, I’d like to share three management lessons the French team taught me:

Don’t count on magic

Fans will tell you: the French team’s performance has been mediocre or disappointing, ever since the 2006 World Cup (when Zinedine Zidane bid adieu to the field with a head butt to an adversary).

The team qualified for the 2010 World Cup thanks to rules changes (that enlarged the pool of contenders) and contestable refereeing (in a qualification victory over Ireland, where officials missed apparent off-side play or the decisive role played by Thierry Henry’s hand).

Whether from hubris or blindness, the French team acted as if it had a place and a prospect in the 2010 World Cup, when it did not. Fans and commentators spun all sorts of stories about how the team would “gel” or “awaken” or “come into its own”. This didn’t happen.

In business as in sport, don’t count on magic.

Communication never stops

An enduring foreign stereotype holds French people out to be haughty, arrogant, and vain.

The behavior of the French team, especially in South Africa, illustrated this stereotype well.

The team spent most of their time in South Africa barricaded in a luxury compound, a five-star hotel rented out for the occasion, complete with its own training field.

The press and fans were not invited; South African police kept them far away.

The message clear sent: indifference, even disdain.

The members of the French team are football professionals. Their technical skills are beyond reproach. They are accustomed to being in the public light. They are used to being part of a team. Part of their job is to show enthusiasm for their work –which many fans experience, vicariously, as play– and to acknowledge that their sportsmanship is worth watching.

This can’t happen if the team is sequestered.

French junior minister for sport Rama Yade –energetic, young, female, black– questioned whether it was really in the team’s best interest to spend so much money on splendid isolation is South Africa. Simply asking the question provoked the team’s anger and a retort about the cost of Rade’s own South African room. These guys really couldn’t take a friendly hint.

The team became even more prickly and aloof when one player’s reported locker-room comments snowballed into a national scandal.

The message was clear: this team preferred to be left alone, out of sight. This is a problem if you’re wearing the national colors.

It’s silly never to acknowledge mistakes

Raymond Domenech, the French team’s manager, makes a fine case study of a bad French habit: never admitting a mistake or misstep, no matter how inconsequential.

Domenech’s mistakes arguably were many. When interviewed, he said as much, then refused to tell the public what those mistakes might have been: “that’s for me”.

Did this make Domenech noble, or brave, or stoic? No, in the eyes of French fans he only looked small. On his better days, he looked like a man marching to the gallows.