8 Most Hated Football Teams Of All Time

2. France (2010)

The French national side headed to the 2010 World Cup as a shadow of their former selves. You could never rule them out in a major tournament, such was the talent that glowed as embers in the aging squad, but their best days were quite clearly left behind them in their title winning years around the turn of the Millennium. Still, they would always make a respectable show of themselves, right? Wrong. They did indeed make a show of themselves, but there was little respectable about it. The qualification campaign had already guaranteed that the French would receive little goodwill during the tournament-the most blatantly obvious handball by Thierry Henry had allowed France to put out the Republic of Ireland, one of the saddest examples of a great player past his best resorting to cheating-and the campaign was about to get a whole lot worse. Before the team even got to South Africa, Sidney Govou, Franck Ribiery and Karim Benzema were linked to an under-age prostitute and Raymond Domenech announced that he would be stepping down as head coach after the tournament. Once the tournament kicked off, Nicholas Anelka argued with Domenech during the game against Mexico and was hauled off. After refusing to apologise, he was sent home and the rest of the squad went on strike as a result. The whole messy affair escalated embarrassingly and very publically. The entire squad was suspended as France exited the tournament at the earliest incident. France's miserable campaign saw the rest of the football world both repulsed and convulsed-with laughter. If you want to be one of the most disliked teams in football, then all you need to do is wash your dirty linen in public.