France wins the World Cup
Something quite extraordinary happened on the evening of Sunday, July 12, 1998: France, playing at home against the current title holders, Brazil, won the World Cup. By three goals to nil. An event with unexpected national and international repercussions...
« We are the champions, we are the champions, we are the champions of the world! », « Zizou for President! », « We won the Cup! », « Merci Mémé ! », « Et un, et deux, et trois/zéro ! », « Thuram for President! ».
At midnight, in the streets of Paris and other cities throughout France - Marseilles, where 60,000 people had gathered on the Prado Beach to watch the match, Lille, Lyons, Toulouse, Nice... -, a genuine explosion of joy and a tidal wave of celebrations burst through the night. Indeed, something important happened that night and in the weeks that preceded it, although it is still too early to tell whether it will have a lasting effect on French society as a whole.
3-0
For the present, France has rewritten the history books and become World champion, against Brazil, with a score line that says it all: 3-0. For evermore, France will be part of the élite club of World Cup winners, of which there are seven in all, for only sixteen World Cup events over a period of more than fifty years: Brazil (4 times winner), Italy (3), Germany (3), Argentina (2), Uruguay (2) and England (1).
The score was not two-one, or two-nil, but three-nil - and not in favour of the team everyone expected. Who would have thought it? Even the most confident, the most optimistic or the cockiest of French supporters could not have dared imagine such a result. Ranked among the favourites from the outset, les Bleus contested a total of seven matches, winning all seven, even if the victory over Italy was due to a penalty kick goal in the final shootout. Only two goals were scored against them while they themselves hit the back of the net fifteen times, finishing ahead of Brazil, with 14 goals, and Holland, with 13.
One of Zinedine Zidane’s two headers that sealed France’s victory in the final.
It was the success of a French team that went from strength to strength, whetting its appetite to win as the tournament progressed, succeeding ultimately thanks to its superb physical and psychological preparation, orchestrated over the last two years by team manager and coach Aimé Jacquet, affectionately nicknamed « Mémé ».
Sweet revenge indeed for the former player turned coach who, over the past two years, had been vilified by a certain section of the press. Jacquet, a somewhat stern,uncomplicated ex-workman who relies on values deeply rooted in his rural background, a sense of just rewards for hard work and effort, had been accused of inadequacy in front of the media, a lack of PR sense. Like all soccer professionals, Michel Hidalgo, a former manager of the French squad, knew that « Jacquet stands for competence and honesty », that he enabled the French team to illustrate perennial virtues such as « a sense of effort, team spirit and the desire to succeed ».
The victory itself was historic. Not only for beating Brazil, universally recognised as invincible, but also for the French side itself, which had made the semi-finals several times in the past (in 1958, 1982, 1986) but had always failed to reach the ultimate stage of the world’s greatest soccer event. That evening, the tricolore side did itself proud. They even managed to surprise their admirers with the intelligent, organised structure of their forward play, their solid defence, their technical skills and determination, their active domination of the game. The Brazilian players fell to earth with a thump, given that some of the Brazilian press had forecast scores of no less than 5-0 in their favour.
A conquering, coherent team
It was a coherent French side with a fighting spirit, (Jacquet spoke of « its communion and complicity ») that took control from the very outset, looking to score, winning back the ball and holding it, in itself no mean feat against the likes of Brazil. They were driven by determination rather than aggressiveness, a stubborn and persistent desire to win, to do whatever it takes.
Lilian Thuram scored the two goals that put France in the final and was always in the thick of the action throughout the World Cup.
In ensuring its ultimate victory it seems that France played by a simple rule: two goals or nothing. Those goals were scored first in the semi-finals, somewhat providentially and in quick succession, by the defender Lilian Thuram against a lively Croatian side; the following day, Thuram was the first to remind everyone that he had never before scored for France. Then, it was the turn of Zinedine Zidane during the first half of the final. Two goals scored with power and precision, headed in from corners, one from the left in the 27th minute, the other from the right thirteen minutes later. Goals by Zidane who, until then, had rarely scored and is not renowned as a great header of the ball.
Midnight on the Place de la Bastille, in Paris, and the final whistle marking the unhoped-for triumphant outcome was blown over an hour ago on the pitch of the Stade de France, in front of 80,000 spectators. There, the players, beside themselves with joy, went on a lap of honour, handing each other the World Cup - which some observers have compared to a pagan Grail as we approach the end of this uncertain century - after receiving their winner’s medal from the hands of the World Cup’s organisers and been warmly congratulated by the President of the French Organising Committee (CFO), Michel Platini, the President of the Republic, Jacques Chirac, and the French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin.
On the Place de la Bastille, some 20,000 people were converging from the suburbs and the surrounding districts, on foot, on skates, by bicycle or by car. 400,000 were already on the Champs-Elysées - where at the height of the evening their ranks were to swell to a million and a half -. On the front of the Arc de Triomphe the names of all 22 players were projected in blue letters, alongside the serious-looking features of « Zizou », nicknamed with almost familiar tenderness, a player whose shy and reserved personality contrasts strangely with his new role as national idol.
A night of delirium
On July 13, the day after the final, no fewer than 600,000 people turned up on the Champs-Elysées, in the sunshine, to offer a triumphant welcome to the French team. On July 14, as the celebrations went on, the 22 « Bleus » were all made Chevaliers de la Légion d’honneur by the President of the Republic.
The wave of celebrations swept through all the towns of France, the players’ native villages, the campsites and resorts where part of the French population were already on holiday, the cafés, the restaurants, the council estates in the outlying suburbs. How many courtyards of high-rise buildings echoed to the roar of the 23 million viewers who watched the final in France, an all-time viewing record (76%)? How many tears were shed, how many lumps stuck in people’s throats as they watched the displays of affection of their national heroes?
It all happened barely an hour ago: the final whistle; the shock and dismay of the Brazilian players as they walked up the steps of the grandstand to collect their silver medals; the relief and delight of Aimé Jacquet; the irrepressible tears of young David Trezeguet, tears that were already welling up several minutes before the end of the match; the eyes, raised to the heavens, of Barthez the extrovert, France’s « flying goalie » who disarmed so many shots on goal; the moment Youri Djorkaeff walked over to comfort Ronaldo, his team mate at Inter Milan in Italy; the explosion of joy of Emmanuel Petit, who had dared to go one step further and score a blistering third goal against Brazil in the final minute of the game!
They were joined on the pitch by Laurent Blanc, who scored such a vital goal against Paraguay in the second round and was forced to sit out the final after being red-carded in the match against Croatia; and by Marcel Desailly, the remarkable defender sent off twenty minutes earlier, whose long legs had always managed to get in the way of the French goal and the attacking strikers. They were all there: the captain Didier Deschamps, Thierry Henry (3 goals in the competition), Christophe Dugarry (1), Bixente Lizarazu (1), Stéphane Guivar’ch, Christian Karembeu, Frank Lebœuf, Patrick Vieira, Alain Boghossian, Bernard Diomède, Robert Pires...
It warmed the heart to see the extreme, deserved and infectious happiness of a united team, a team of strong, likeable and courageous characters who, little by little, had won the hearts of the French nation, men and, of course, women in quite another way. A team never tempted to boast or to belittle its opponents, a team that firmly stated its determination never to give up, to go as far as possible, even to the final to grab hold of that historic trophy. A team that played from the heart, that simply had « more faith than Brazil », to quote the defender Lizarazu the following day.
« A France that wins »
As it gained in confidence and went from success to success, this lucid and realistic French side also managed to rid itself, once and for all, of a certain French inhibition with regard to sports in particular. The team managed to shatter a dual taboo not only by winning but by winning against the best team in the world. It was that performance and the self-confidence it generated that undoubtedly brought it so much recognition and so much popularity. A French sociologist even contrived to coin the term of « psychological re-narcissisation » when talking about the impact of the victory on the French. In its special supplement, the daily Le Monde wrote: « Finally they have slain the father, the fathers, all the fathers, Fontaine, Kopa, Platini, Trésor, all those who almost did it, who could have done it, should have done it, would so much have wanted to do it ».
Never in living memory had Paris - or France
Amidst the greetings, the smiles, the shouting and the hooting, the car horns, the bangers and the smoke bombs, the crowds hustled and bustled, embraced, mingled, danced, improvised Mexican waves and chanted the uniting slogan, highly symbolic of this night of collective madness: « Zidane président! » Cars were bumped, hands shaken, a complete sense of togetherness prevailing. Flags floated above the crowds and waved to the rhythm of tomtoms; the French flag but also the Algerian flag, in tribute to « Zizou’s » Kabyle origins.
A national awakening
It is impossible not to believe that something important is happening. Of course, it’s only football but it’s also much more than that. This truly national victory reflects France as it is today, i.e. multi-cultural yet united behind the values of a tolerant, humanistic Republic. Players from the Antilles, Armenia, the Basque country, Brittany, Guadeloupe, Kabylia, New Caledonia, Normandy, united by a trainer native of the Loire region, the cradle of France. An out and out symbol of a nation à la française! The team is the embodiment of a French melting pot, an encouragement to French people to identify positively with what they really are, a pluralistic nation.
That night, at the height of the celebrations, over a million and a half people gathered on the Champs-Elysées, in Paris.
Michèle Tribalat, a demographer specialising in immigration, believes that the team managed to achieve « more for integration than years of well-intentioned policies ». France’s Ambassador to the U. N., Alain Dejammet, hailed the victory before the assembled press as a « tribute to multi-cultural France »; the President of the Republic Jacques Chirac spoke of « a tri-coloured and multi-coloured France ».
This victory is therefore the victory of a young France (the team’s average age is 22-23), not focused on Paris, in part of immigrant origin, too often sidelined from any positive representation in political or media terms, a France unable to find its place, a France that feels excluded, not to say scorned.
On this evening, through the victory of these players - Djorkaeff from the suburbs of Lyons; Thuram from the suburbs of Paris; Zidane, the son of an Algerian immigrant, from the disadvantaged northern districts of Marseilles -, it is as if the young up-and-coming generation from the suburbs had gained the right to be French on its merits, a minor revolution given the frustrations apparent behind their outbursts of joy and energy. It is as if they had at last been able to take pride in both their own backgrounds and their French-ness. As the slogan « Zidane président! » echoed through the streets, one may have sensed one part of France at last saying out loud to the other that the two could perhaps get on well together.
France itself was being shaken up as it danced, a little surprised by this sudden closeness between two worlds normally kept apart, without inhibition brandishing a flag wrested from xenophobic and racist forces, restored to its universalist dimension. One of the merits of the World Cup, among others, will have been to allow the reappropriation of all the emblems of French identity.
All together
The full squad on the evening of their victory. With their mix of courage, modesty and ambition, they provided the French people with a likeable image of themselves.
1.30 A. M., on the Place de la Bastille: to the beat of techno music, a car tugs a happy parade in its wake down the Rue Saint-Antoine, leading straight to the Place de la Concorde, mingling youths from suburban estates with well-heeled, trendy Parisians, all united as one through the World Cup. This is the other surprise of the World Cup, the way in which soccer - the sport of the masses par excellence, the world’s most popular sport and, in that sense, the only sport capable of triggering collective movements on such a vast scale - has been reconciled in France with the intellectual élite1, the well-to-do classes, and with women, who, against all expectations, have literally and with great passion adopted the World Cup for themselves, seduced by players who are anything but performing circus animals and supporting them with, at times, maternal instincts. In fact, one of the banners in the Stade de France read « Thank you, Aimé; thanks to you our women love football too! »
The World Cup and soccer - the revealer of human passions, a metaphor for life in a society, a catalyst of energies and national sentiment - seems to have succeeded, albeit for the duration of an exceptional moment, where politics have failed: by bridging the notorious « social gap », the dominant theme of the last presidential campaign and the tedious subject of many a political essay. It appears to have succeeded in (re-)creating social ties, in bringing together social strata normally kept well apart.
Many French and foreign commentators have underlined the social cohesive power of the World Cup, the state of grace of a country united behind its national team, beyond traditional cultural, social and political gulfs. The New York Times, rehashing the cliché of « this ungovernable country, a country that agrees on nothing, eternally divided, profoundly sceptical », underlined that it « found itself united behind a football team... The team became the positive symbol of a country that rediscovers growth after a long period of blues ».
Also surrendering to French enthusiasm, U.S. magazines Time and Newsweek, generally unsparing in their criticism of France, paid tribute to the tricolore team on their cover, with headlines in French such as « Bravo la France ! » and « Allez les Bleus ! » The warmth of the reaction of the French people, reputed as arrogant or branded as sullen, and the dignity of their team had earned them the sympathy and esteem of the international press.
According to Pascal Boniface, Director at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS)2, one might also add a general recognition of the efficiency of all things French. He believes that « its football team has given France a measure of influence that improves its position in the world » and that « it is undeniable that victories on the football pitch will have favourable effects on the status of our country throughout the world ».
The power of a metaphor
A just reward for the supreme efforts of coach and selector Aimé Jacquet.
And while it is doubtful that this victory, these days and nights of rare communion, are sufficient in themselves to reverse the course of things at the national level3, one has to concede that, owing to them, perhaps as never before, « a nation’s desire for union, cohesion and strength » has been expressed, as the President of the Republic himself did not fail to mention. It is perhaps only a moment but a unique one, which paradoxically succeeded in highlighting all that this society lacks but also all that it contains in the way of aspirations and the ability to share.
On the Champs Elysées in Paris, on the beach in Marseilles, in public places throughout France, there emerged a little more social blending, a touch more national spirit and fraternity. If only for that, we ought to thank « les Bleus ».
1. In fact, a series of works analysing soccer from sociological, anthropological, political... angles came out during the World Cup: La Passion du football, by Patrick Mignon, sociology researcher, (Odile Jacob, 1998); Football, la bagatelle la plus sérieuse du monde, by Christian Bromberger, professor of ethnology, (Bayard société, 1998); Y a pas péno, Fous de foot, an anthology of original texts by contemporary writers such as Benacquista, Labro, Picouly, Ravalec, Van Cauwelaert, Werber..., Flammarion, 1998. See also the May-June issue of « Manière de voir » in Le Monde diplomatique.
2. He is the author of Géopolitique du football, by Complexe, Paris, 1998.
3. An IFOP survey for l’Evénement du Jeudi confirms that the World Cup has made the French more optimistic and confident about the future (54%).
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