French Soccer and the Future of Europe
The story of the 2006 World Cup has been the resurrection of France. After a lackluster performance in its first two games, the French team shocked the football watching world – otherwise known as “the world” – by upsetting Spain and then dethroning Brazil, the second time in three World Cups the French have knocked off the global kings of “the beautiful game.”
While hundreds of thousands of people celebrated on the Champs-ElysíŠes following France’s stunning turn-around, not everyone was feeling the joy. Proud racist and leader of the ultra-right wing National Front, Jean- Marie Le Pen, could not resist defiling the moment. Le Pen decried France’s multi- ethnic team as unrepresentative of French society, saying that France “cannot recognize itself in the national side,” and “maybe the coach exaggerated the proportion of players of color and should have been a bit more careful.”
Le Pen and others of his ilk do not recognize themselves in a team whose leader is of Algerian descent – Zinedine Zidane – and whose most feared striker is black – Thierry Henry. Le Pen used to torture Algerians for the French military in the 1950s and it turns his stomach that his team reflects France’s (and Europe’s) colonial past, with players from Cameroon, Guadalupe, Senegal, Congo, Algeria, and Benin among other countries.
Le Pen’s efforts to use the pitch as a battleground for his Neanderthal views about immigration and Islam have not gone unanswered. After his latest comments, France midfielder Lilian Thuram said, “Clearly, he is unaware that there are Frenchmen who are black, Frenchmen who are white, Frenchmen who are brown. I think that reflects particularly badly on a man who has aspirations to be president of France but yet clearly doesn’t know anything about French history or society…. That’s pretty serious. He’s the type of person who’d turn on the television and see the American basketball team and wonder: ‘Hold on, there are black people playing for America? What’s going on?'”
Thuram went on to say, “When we take to the field, we do so as Frenchmen. All of us. When people were celebrating our win, they were celebrating us as Frenchmen, not black men or white men. It doesn’t matter if we’re black or not, because we’re French. I’ve just got one thing to say to Jean Marie Le Pen.
The French team are all very, very proud to be French. If he’s got a problem with us, that’s down to him but we are proud to represent this country. So Vive la France, but the true France. Not the France that he wants.”
In addition, the immensely talented Henry has started an antiracist campaign called Stand Up Speak Up. Henry pushed his sponsor Nike to produce black and white intertwined armbands that demonstrate a commitment against racism. So far, they have sold more than five million. “That’s important in making the very real point that racism is a problem for everyone, a collective ailment,” Henry said to Time Magazine. “It shows that people of all colors, even adversaries on the pitch, are banding together in this, because we’re all suffering from it together.”
zmag.org