Cold arena leads the French to screw up (7)
I believe the answer is:
crinkle
'screw up' is the definition.
'crinkle' can be an answer for 'screw' (thesaurus). I am not certain of the 'up' bit.
'cold arena leads the french' is the wordplay.
'cold' becomes 'C' (eg on taps).
'arena' becomes 'rink' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'leads' says to put letters next to each other (some letters go in front of others).
'the french' becomes 'le' ('the' in French).
'c'+'rink'+'le'='CRINKLE'
'to' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for crinkle that I've seen before include "Clinker (anag.)" , "Small crease or wrinkle" , "Curl" .)