At the end of the end of the World Cup two football giants left the pitch ignominiously, a Brit limping and blubbing, a Frenchman expelled for headbutting an Italian. Next year, two other erstwhile stars retire. In doing so, Blair and Chirac will confirm Enoch Powell's dictum that "all political careers end in failure."
It's difficult to decide who is more execrable.
My own French friends would almost unanimously plump for Chirac. Untreated Blair spin spores have somehow wafted over the Channel.
The English would be more even-handed, either in a spirit of fair play or, more likely, after years of reading anti-Chirac xenophobic vitriol churned out by the tabloids.
I can't make up my mind.
When Chirac became president some thought he would be too much of a chien fou (crazy dog), an unpredictable, pure political opportunist with a sometimes shady past.
But after the dreary end of the Mitterand years, Chirac's pledge to mend the "social fracture" was appealing.
In the end, the gap between promise and outcome was large.
During Chirac's reign, France has shed its position as one of the top five world economies, economic growth has been lacklustre, and unemployment has stayed stubbornly high.
Last year mostly immigrant hoodlums torched cars in weeks of rioting. This year students staged often violent protests against laws designed to shake up the labour market.
Gilded French youths leave their grandes ecoles to take up well paid jobs in New York or London, many of them never to return.
Attempts at reform have been cowardly, and France's public debt is spiralling out of control in a manner akin to that of some emerging markets ten years ago.
On the foreign policy front things are just as bad.
Although the latest French role in Lebanon is encouraging, it is the swansong of an approach that lost France its Great Power status, above all in Europe, besides alienating the US in the manner of its resistance to the Iraq War.
People do laud Chirac for his attacks against racism, but these didn't stop far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen reaching the second round of 2002's presidential elections, a feat which may be repeated next year. Only one or two Arabs or blacks can be found in token positions of economic or political power.
Chirac's end may not be pleasant. Investigating judges are probably sharpening their knives for the day he loses presidential immunity from prosecution.
Across the Channel, Blair also scores highly in execrableness.
When elected in 1997 Blair exuded a kind of smarmy charm, labelled charisma at the time, that made a change from his predecessor's dullness.
He proclaimed that he was a "just a straight kind of guy" and shamelessly appropriated aspects of the lurid, emotional aftermath of Princess Diana's death.
What has he really achieved? He inherited a vibrant, deregulated economy and along with his finance minister has wound up British business in red tape.
Education reforms have failed to stem the inexorable dumbing down of Britain. The Home Office (interior and justice ministry) is going through its worst crisis for generations.
As for foreign policy, read this excerpt from an article in the Financial Times by Sir Roderick Braithwaite, sometime UK ambassador to Moscow, head spy and foreign policy wonk.
Mr Blair’s prime responsibility is to defend the interests of his own country. This he has signally failed to do. Stiff in his opinions, but often in the wrong, he has manipulated public opinion, sent our soldiers into distant lands for ill-conceived purposes, misused the intelligence agencies to serve his ends and reduced the Foreign Office to a demoralised cipher because it keeps reminding him of inconvenient facts. He keeps the dog, but he barely notices if it barks or not. He prefers to construct his "foreign policy" out of self-righteous soundbites and expensive foreign travel.
Mr Blair has done more damage to British interests in the Middle East than Anthony Eden, who led the UK to disaster in Suez 50 years ago. In the past 100 years – to take the highlights – we have bombed and occupied Egypt and Iraq, put down an Arab uprising in Palestine and overthrown governments in Iran, Iraq and the Gulf. We can no longer do these things on our own, so we do them with the Americans. Mr Blair’s total identification with the White House has destroyed his influence in Washington, Europe and the Middle East itself: who bothers with the monkey if he can go straight to the organ-grinder?
For supporters of the war like me it has been especially difficult to stomach Blair's craven failure to extract a decent payback for British support or to influence meaningfully the conduct of postwar reconstruction.
Blair and Chirac will step down next year, Blair restless and bored on the rubber chicken lecture circuit, Chirac to an old age troubled by the irksome consequences of past scrapes with the law.
I can't decide who is worse. Sadly, and more importantly, I don't know if their successors will be any better.
Le Monde publishes a short interview with Eric Labaye of McKinsey (the management consultants) in which Labaye decries 
