"Catastrophic", screamed a headline on the front page of French sports daily L'Equipe on Saturday, a day after Les Bleus fell 1-0 to modest Belarus at Stade de France in new coach Laurent Blanc's first competitive game in charge.
"We took a slap in the face," Sagna told reporters after France looked toothless up front and naive at the back against relatively harmless opposition.
"It's a nuisance to start with a defeat, especially at home, but we must keep our heads held high and get back to work immediately," he added.
"We're in a difficult situation and we need to fight, which is exactly what we will do," Blanc, who relied on a young and largely untested team, told reporters.
"You have to face the fact that the best two scorers in our team (against Belarus), Malouda and (Louis) Saha, had scored just four (international) goals," he said. "You can't say that we have players who know how to score goals."
France, who shocked their fans at the World Cup by boycotting a training session after Nicolas Anelka was sent home for insulting Domenech, have a long way to go to recapture their place among the world's elite.
"Nothing works in our favour at the moment with all those injuries," said Blanc. "It's difficult to find anything positive in a defeat but there were things in our game that I liked."
"When you can't win, you must make sure not to lose but that sort of thing comes from experience," Blanc said. "When you're young, you make mistakes. Our problem is we cannot afford to make any."
