Six Nations Championship/France v Italy: "A game like any other," insists Italy's coach Pierre Berbizier as his side prepares to face France today. A game like any other, except that Berbizier is returning to the French capital to face the side he captained 13 times and coached for just over three years, a team he criticised virulently less than 18 months ago in every area: management, strategy, players.

"Beyond revenge," read a headline in L'Equipe this week trailing Berbizier's return. When the small, intense 47-year-old takes his seat on the bench in the Stade de France tomorrow in his dapper blue suit and his Italian federation tie, the moment will mark the return of one of French rugby's prodigal sons to a country where he has old scores to settle.

This week, Bernard Laporte was keen to praise his fellow scrumhalf and predecessor in charge of Les Bleus. "There are two people I always wanted to follow and adored as coaches: Jacques Fouroux and Pierre Berbizier. He made me want to do this job."

Berbizier too is keen to play down any hint of a rift. "There is no particular polemic between me and Laporte. We have exchanged opinions without problems. Each of us has his way of thinking that's one of rugby's strengths."

Even so the choleric Laporte can hardly have taken kindly to Berbizier's comments on his style of management after their defeat by the All Blacks in November 2004. "This defeat has the hallmarks of the loss in Sydney in the (2003) World Cup," he said.

"There are no more solutions with this group of players and this method of managing them.

"They imploded. The players don't know where they are. I don't see any structure in their game. Apart from driving mauls, what do they do in the forwards? There is no variety in the game, no kicking game. The issue is what playing style France want, and what players they want to play it."

Laporte's number eight, Thomas Lievremont, made it clear this week those words have not been forgotten: "He is a guy who has criticised the French team a lot, and now he will want to prove that all his certainties, everything he has said, that it's all correct."

"The key thing is how (Italy) perform," insists Berbizier, but the spats that punctuated his career as a player and coach in his homeland will add an extra piquancy to today's fare.

In 1995, having lost a World Cup semi-final against the Springboks in circumstances he described as "daylight sporting robbery", he was relieved of his job as national coach.

Four years earlier he was removed from the France team by the coach Daniel Dubroca, a former team-mate, because, as he said: "I considered certain people should not be in the changing-rooms."

He also lost his place at Agen, the team he had led to a French title in 1988.

Italy have threatened Les Bleus here before. Though last year France put 56 points past the Azzurri in Rome, four years ago a gritty first half at the Stade de France from the Italians and a nervous French performance saw barracking from the crowd and provoked Laporte into lambasting his team during the break in the changing-rooms.

Laporte's angry words and gestures were captured on film and turned into a pasta advert. If it all starts to go wrong today, the France coach is unlikely to receive any favours from the crowd he insulted after the near miss against Ireland. And if Berbizier's Italy - eight of whom are based in France - have a whiff of an upset, Barilla executives will, presumably, be salivating.

Guardian Service