  We construct an effective model for the chiral field and the Polyakov loop in
which we can investigate the interplay between the approximate chiral symmetry
restoration and the deconfinement of color in a thermal SU(3) gauge theory with
three flavors of massive quarks. The phenomenological couplings between these
two sectors can then be related to the recent lattice data on the renormalized
Polyakov loop and the chiral condensate close to the critical region.
