Players as Heroes: ‘les Bleus’, and National Identity

France has always been an importer and an exporter of players at club level. Players like the Englishman Glenn Hoddle (Monaco), the Yugoslav Josip Skoblar (Marseille), and the Brazilian Rai (PSG) have over the years been adopted as heroes by French clubs, helping open up French football to foreign influences and new ideas. Since the mid-1990s in particular, when most of their international side have been playing in other European leagues, the French press and television have also taken a strong interest in football abroad by focusing on the exploits of their own nationals. Whereas the aura of club heroes has remained at a relatively local level, the French players who have become legends and national heroes are those who have made their names representing the national team, often of foreign extraction themselves: the Kopas, the Platinis and the Zidanes. The national team’s relation to national identity became an important social phenomenon at the time of the 1998 World Cup victory, when the multiracial team was turned, perhaps only briefly, but certainly memorably, into a symbol of the new France, a winning France, a multiethnic Republic at peace with itself. Footballers as National Heroes: from Kopa to Platini Football and National Identity Unlike, say, Uruguay (see Giulianotti 2000), France’s formation as a modern nation-state was a century too early for football to have been a tool for forging an initial shared national identity. This was achieved, in the face of major ideological conflict throughout the nineteenth century, through strengthening the ancien régime’s already centralised administration; the imposition by Napoleon of a judicial system, the Civil Code; and the spread of the standard French language replacing provincial dialects, a process completed by the innovation in the 1880s of a free, universal and secular primary school system promoting Republican values of individual freedom, the equality of every citizen, and social solidarity. The growing transport infrastructure following the building of a national rail network in the nineteenth century (itself helping the development of a national press), three military invasions (1870, 1914, 1940), and in particular the social and regional mixing in the 1914–18 trenches, helped unite the country and gain a sense of itself as a nation around the idea of the ‘one and indivisible Republic’. National consciousness and identity is not, however, a once-and-for-all acquisition within a society. Writers such as Philip Schlesinger (1991), Stuart Hall (1992), Chris Barker (1997) and others have argued, after Anderson (1983: 15–16), that the nation is an ‘imagined community’, that national cultural identity is constructed and reproduced by narratives of the nation, by stories, images, symbols and rituals that represent shared meanings of nationhood; that collective identity is always provisional and has to be continually reinforced; that it is via the newspapers and radio and television news especially that people are encouraged to imagine such events occurring simultaneously; and that national culture must be linked to shared consciousness of events that matter. This does not mean that national identity is at the forefront of most people’s minds for most of the time. As Giddens has pointed out (1985), identity and meaningful experience are much more likely to arise in the realms of the private spheres of family, friends, and sexual relationships, and, one might add, in the work place. It is probably true that the routine of daily life is only occasionally interrupted by shared consciousness of events of national importance, but the key collective rituals that impinge on national cultural identity include important political events, such as presidential elections, serious disasters, national commemorations, State funerals . .. or major sporting events. Anderson’s notions of the simultaneous moment and the imagined community have often been applied to sporting events, for example by Vidacs (2000) à propos of the modern Cameroon nation: a people’s sense of belonging to a community can be cemented by imagining the nation while watching a televised transmission of an important football match, whether the result is victory or defeat. National Consciousness and Football Myth When football achieves national popularity it can contribute significantly to the formation of these narratives of collective national identity. In international football competitions, such as the World Cup or the European Nations Cup, it is teams representing nations that are pitted against each other and such structures have ways of imposing themselves on the popular imagination. Two important aspects of the impact of the 1998 World Cup victory was that the matches were played in France and many people went to stadiums before the matches even without tickets, just to be part of the atmosphere though remaining outside, and then went back to city centres to watch the match in the open on big screens. Thousands of people were thus able to participate collectively in these simultaneous moments, making the imagined community all the easier to conjure up in the mind’s eye. A similar identification with a team as the nation’s representative can happen at club level in a competition such as the European Champions Cup, where the nation’s champion is pitted against the champions of other nations. It is possible to trace a historical line of key moments when the French nation’s interest was focused on football as a purveyor of narratives and images of national significance, even if the line is at times a broken one. A major early event was the national team’s first victory over England in 1921, on the anniversary of Napoleon’s death, regarded at the time as a historic victory, even if it was only the England amateur international side. The growing number of international matches, and the hosting of the World Cup in 1938, helped create a shared sense of national identity in supporting the country, especially since the different federations had settled their differences in 1919 in the wake of the political Sacred Union entered into for the purposes of national defence in 1914. The problem was that France was not notably successful in international football encounters. The symbiotic relationship of football and nation was recognised early when the French Cup Final was quickly invested with a significance as a national annual ritual by the official presence of the President of the Republic to meet the teams and present the cup. The other symbiotic relationship, between football and the press, allowed newspapers, before the Second World War, to create a star system to exploit interest in the game through narratives of the exploits of a number of national heroes and characters in French soccer. Although this began in earnest in the 1950s with the popularity of radio and the increasing number of magazines with photos (Wahl 1989: 287), there were earlier stars. One indisputable hero before and after the First World War was perhaps the only famous goalkeeper in French history (before Barthez), Pierre Chayriguès, playing for Red Star with a personality to match his huge frame. He was the first goalkeeper to come off his line, commanding his penalty area. He was reputed to claim enormous expenses payments and medical bills in the days before professionalism was legal and shamateurism was consequently growing. On at least one occasion he arrived at the FFFA headquarters on crutches, leaving with a large cheque in his pocket . . . without his crutches (Thibert and Rethacker 1996: 65). Despite his size, this picture of Chayriguès fits the common national stereotype of the wily little French individualist putting one over on those in authority, a recognisable character from Maupassant’s short stories to the cartoon characters in the Astérix cartoon stories. The older Chayriguès was an Astérix in the body of Obélix.

Kopa and a First Taste of International Success The main successes of French club and national sides coincided with the beginnings and later the high points of the era of national terrestrial television, when a fully national audience could watch certain games simultaneously. L ’Equipe, along the same lines as its organisation of and coverage of the Tour de France cycle race, also made the most of the European Cup that it had originated to stimulate interest in club football and thereby sell papers. It was in the 1950s, with the innovation of European club competitions and France’s unexpectedly good performance in the World Cup, that national interest was aroused in football as a vector of national values. In the very first season of the European Cup, 1955/56, the French public was increasingly interested to follow the progress of Stade de Reims, playing all their home matches in Paris to allow bigger gates (Wahl 1989: 315). Reims dominated French football in the 1950s with six French championships in 12 years from 1949. With their star forward Raymond Kopa, they fell 4–3 at the final European hurdle in Paris to Real Madrid, who were to go on to win the trophy for five consecutive years. Reims reached the final again in 1959, but this time Kopa was gaining his third winner’s medal playing alongside the legendary Di Stefano of Real. As with Platini in Italy in the 1980s, and Cantona, Henry and Vieira in England in the 1990s and beyond, the exploits abroad of a French star were also a matter of keen interest in France, and often of pride. The weekly televised football highlights programme will always devote some time to French stars abroad, as does the sporting press. In the meantime, in 1958, the national interest created around the top French club side was capitalised on by the national team (which included six of Kopa’s former Reims team-mates). France finished third in the World Cup in Sweden, with Kopa creating many of Just Fontaine’s 13 goals in six matches in the course of the finals, a record unlikely to be beaten in today’s more defensive game. Radio coverage by Europe No.1 (Bourg 1986: 128) was the live link with the French public, and the commentator underlined the national import of the event by greeting each of France’s two goals in the semi-final with a chauvinistic ‘Vive la France’. In the days before substitutes for injured players, centre-half Jonquet became a virtual passenger; France could not overcome the odds and an unknown seventeen-year-old Brazilian called Pele scored a hat-trick. Kopa was awarded the Player of the Tournament trophy by FIFA (equal first with the Brazilian Didi). What he valued more, however, was the 1958 European Player of the Year trophy, the Ballon d’Or, awarded by France Football – the only one he did not sell off in 2001 (France Football, 27 March 1980). Kopa was undeniably the player of his generation, and was at the end of the twentieth century remembered as one of the top three French players of all time (France Football, 26 December 2000). Smaller than average for a footballer, above all he was a technically brilliant dribbler, playing either on the right-wing or inside forward, with a short-passing game and a eye for the defence-splitting pass. He came from one of the working-class French immigrant communities – Polish in his case – in northern France (Noeux-les-Mines). His style was controversial. The Communist press stressed playing for enjoyment, whereas the more conservative sports press, such as Hanot in France Football, criticised this ‘romantic approach’ that was not effective enough in defence. As Lanfranchi and Wahl (1996: 116) point out in their article on Kopa, he polarised two opposing approaches to the game. The French Left stressed the beauty of the game, its enjoyment, and entertainment value, as opposed to the idea that winning was everything. Wider social and political values were at stake in the debate about whether the Kopa and Reims style was French or not. For the Communists, football was an expression of social harmony through leisure activity, and should not be turned into a business activity that imitated factory discipline. For the right, the new France needed to be modernised and made effective and efficient by adopting the values of contemporary (capitalist) economic life. Kopa also became a symbol of social advancement through hard work, and appeared to be motivated by a strong desire to be fully accepted into French mainstream society. Having been unable to play for the French national youth team because he was Polish, he applied for French citizenship at the age of twentyone, changed his name from Kopaszewski, and was proud to do his military service, as well as to ‘defend the French colours’ in his sporting capacity. Lanfranchi and Wahl tell us that Kopa never tried to keep in touch with his Polish roots. He denied he could speak the language of his parents (1996: 117). Naturally brilliant at the game, he was often quoted as stressing the hard work needed to reach the top: ‘If I had been born into a wealthy family, there would never have been a Raymond Kopa. Without the mine, I’d have been a good player. Nothing more. But there was the mine. My name was Kopaszewski and to get out I had nothing but football’ (ibid. 1996: 118). As his biographers say, by stressing this aspect of his success, he became a force for order and harmony, the image that the right-wing press had created of him (ibid.: 118– 119). His one major stand against the social status quo was his rebellion against the professional footballers’ contract for life and the retain-and-transfer system, which he regarded as a form of labour slavery. Platini: France versus Germany . . . again A feeling grew that the meaning of international football competition in terms of national identity was that France may play well but were always destined to heroic defeat – the Astérix complex. This fits the major trauma of the French national football consciousness of the 1980s, the era bestrode by Michel Platini. Two-thirds of the national television audience sat entranced by the interminably unfolding drama of Seville 1982. In progressing to the semi-finals of the World Cup with attacking panache that won them support from all around the world from lovers of the beautiful game, the French team under the inspired captaincy of Platini prepared to meet West Germany. For many viewers France versus Germany had an adversarial history: three successive invasions of French soil in 1870, 1914, 1940 – a history the commentators did not need to recall. SaintEtienne had twice fallen to a German team in their failure to win the European Cup. There had more recently of course been the de Gaulle–Adenauer national reconciliation and the Giscard–Schmidt axis at the head of the European Community. But another France–Germany clash provided opportunities to stir up atavistic bitterness. The most powerful images that remain in the mind are of the infamous turning point of the match: in the fiftieth minute, one goal each: the German goalkeeper Schumacher rushing to the edge of his penalty area and crashing into Battiston, as he chases a through ball; the shocked concern of captain Platini as he puts out a hand towards the shoulder of his unconscious team-mate who is lying motionless on the stretcher. No goal, and the Dutch referee awards no penalty, no sending off, no foul even. Schumacher was quoted afterwards as more or less admitting to a ‘professional foul’: ‘Football has changed a lot in fifteen years. Before, perhaps, the clash with Battiston wouldn’t have happened. But today you are always playing at the limit. Football is also a business; players are extremely tensed up’ (Bourg 1986: 171–172). The French continued to attack relentlessly, Rocheteau had a goal disallowed, Amoros hit the bar in the ninetieth minute, but, with no more goals, the match went into extra time. Within ten minutes Trésor, then Giresse put France 3– 1 ahead. However, a tiring French team conceded a goal before the turn round and then an equaliser in the 108th minute, but extra time finished with the sides still level. In the penalty shoot-out, each side converted four out of the first five penalties. In the sudden death phase, Bossis missed, Hrubesch scored. It made draining viewing and left a sense of injustice that the best team had not won, again (see Baddiel 2000). In the memory of one of the most famous TV sports journalists, Georges de Caunes, the Battiston–Schumacher incident revived in men of his generation emotions felt during the Second World War (Lecoq 1997: 132). A whole nation experienced together the catharsis of shared disappointment for their tragic national heroes. Manager Hidalgo remained generous and dignified in defeat, and he and his players immediately entered the pantheon of valiant French sporting heroes – defeated ones, like Racinian heroes from the French classical stage, unable to sustain the unequal struggle against the inevitable course of destiny. When a few days later Germany lost to Italy in the final, France Football headlined: ‘Justice est faite’ [Justice has been done]. Victory two years later in the European Nation’s Cup at the Parc des Princes for Platini’s heroes, the first French victory in a major international tournament, was constantly replayed on television. Fans celebrated deliriously in the streets of a Paris temporarily diverted from worry over unemployment and socialist economic policy. Hidalgo became a national hero. Platini was depicted as a national treasure, ‘Platinix le goalois’, top scorer with nine goals in the tournament, a legend in France and a legend in Italy. He could never have imagined the manner in which he would win his European Champions cup medal at Heysel the following year, against Liverpool, as the final was played after 38 Italian supporters had been crushed to death on the terraces. Losing in the semi-final to Germany in the next World Cup in Guadalajara in 1986, seemed in comparison with the previous events an anticlimax, but nicely fitting the thesis of inevitable and courageous defeats for ‘les petits Français’. France Football elected Platini as the French Player of the Century. By the time he retired in 1987 aged 31 Platini had won everything except the World Cup. In France he won the French Cup with Nancy (1978), the Championship with Saint-Etienne (1981), with Juventus the Italian Cup (1983), two Italian championships (1984 and 1986), the European Cup Winners Cup and European Super Cup (1984), the European Champions Cup (1985). He was three times both top scorer in Italy and European Footballer of the Year (1983–85). He scored 41 goals in 72 matches for France, out of 353 career goals. He made the number 10 national jersey his own, ever after to be the iconic French shirt that is passed on to the key player in the national team. His vision, his eye for goal, his determination and his expertise with free-kicks, a modern skill he was perhaps the first to master, will always be remembered. His career as manager of the national team was, in comparison with his playing career, a disappointment for the French public who put enormous pressure on Platini to succeed: failure to qualify for the 1990 World Cup was, however, followed by qualification for the European Nations Cup in 1992. He preferred to leave this high pressure post and became co-president of the Organising Committee of the 1998 World Cup, having gained a reputation as a successful businessman from his later years as a player. His ambitions have not stopped, since he is seeking to establish a career within the FFF and FIFA as an international football administrator, having been an unofficial running-mate and high-profile supporter of Sepp Blatter, elected FIFA President in 1998. He is (in 2002) a vice-president of the FFF and a member of UEFA’s and FIFA’s executive committees.

Unlikely Heroes and Villains: Milla, Waddle, Cantona and Ginola French football heroes have generally been those who have excelled for the national team. In their different eras Kopa and Platini were the focus of football’s national audience and of national pride – particularly when playing for France, but also when excelling in club football abroad. Picking out a few other individual heroes to compete with the greats is invidious and controversial. It should be said, of course, that Kopa never forgot to mention the debt he owed to his colleagues Piantoni and Fontaine, and chose Larbi Ben Barek as second only to Platini as the French all-time great. Platini’s success for France is also often bracketed with the midfield contributions of Tigana, Giresse and Fernandez. The undoubted star of the next generation of internationals was the striker JeanPierre Papin, author of 30 goals in 54 appearances for the national team. And who to leave out of a list of the heroes of the 1998 squad? Not captain Deschamps, nor the back line of Thuram, Desailly, Blanc, and Lizarazu. Nor Henry and Vieira from the generation that left its stamp on the 2000 victory. At French club level the all-time highest scorer in the French league is Bernard Lacombe, whose total of 255 goals for Lyon (from 1970 to 1987) looks hard to beat in post-Bosman times. Yet he never came close, in a single season, to the Yugoslav Josip Skoblar’s 44 goals for Marseille (1970/71). Will Monaco goalkeeper Jean-Luc Ettori’s 602 games in Division 1 (from 1975 to 1994) ever be beaten, or, as an outfield player Alain Giresse’s 519 matches for the same club, Bordeaux (from 1970 to 1988)? How could the Uruguayan Enzo Francescoli be forgotten at Marseille when Zidane named his son after his hero? Although they have wider reputations, for better or worse, the following four players, two imports and two exports, had played memorably in France. They offer different insights into French club football through the ways they managed to flourish there or not.

Roger Milla – African Player of the Century A player who should have been a hero at French club level but who wasn’t quite is Roger Milla. Cameroon is known to many as a country solely because of Roger Milla’s exploits in the 1990 World Cup. The 38-year-old’s stylish goals that took the Indomitable Lions so close to the semi-finals were celebrated with sways of the hips around the corner flag in improvised makossa rhythm, a televisual image that went around the world. Improbably reaching the quarterfinals, they lost only after extra-time to England. By then Milla had become a household name as a twinkle-toed goalscorer while somewhat overweight and obviously not match-fit and in the twilight of his career.

Born in 1952 he became African player of the year in 1975 and 1976 with Yaoundé’s Tonnerre, before leaving for a decade with French clubs in order to become a full professional. However, he never quite fulfilled his potential and felt exploited. Arriving in the northern town of Valenciennes in 1977 he found his contract and living conditions did not live up to the promises made, and felt discriminated against because of his black skin (Ramsey 2000: 180). After two years he left for Monaco and warmer climes, but was used mainly as a substitute, scoring a number of goals. One more year and he travelled further south to Bastia, led the attack and scored more goals, including the winning goal in the French Cup. In 1982 he moved on again to Saint-Etienne who had been relegated to Division 2, and he helped them back to Division 1 with 22 goals. Meanwhile he steered the Cameroon Lions to the final of the African Nations Cup and won the Player of the Tournament trophy. Still feeling exploited, he moved on to Montpellier in 1986 for three years and helped them gain promotion. Here is where he was happiest, under the wing of chairman Louis Nicollin, whom he claims was the only club chairman who did not ‘rip him off’ (Ramsey 2000: 181). Then, in semi-retirement on the island of Réunion, when Cameroon reached the World Cup Finals in Italy, out of the blue he was recalled to the national team and became a legend. He has since been voted African player of the century and Cameroon the African team of the century. Many other black African players have followed in his footsteps to France, some, like Basile Boli at Marseille, succeeding and some experiencing similar or worse frustrations than Milla. Few have had his talent. (See Ramsay 2000, and Tshitenge 1998.) Chris Waddle – ‘the worst sight in football’ The enduring standing of Chris Waddle in Marseille may be hard to take in for the more insular of English football fans, but Olivia Blair may be guilty only of mild hyperbole when she says that ‘Magic’ Waddle, as the fans called him, was as integral to the OM of the early 1990s as fish to the local bouillabaisse (Blair 2000: 159). His unique skills (rather than his scruffy appearance and mullet haircut) were summed up by Alan Hansen: ‘For a defender, Chris running at you is the worst sight in football’ (Ball and Shaw 1996: 47). Bought by Bernard Tapie in 1989, Waddle the entertainer found in the Stade vélodrome a stage and an audience as passionate as his original Tyneside fans, and perhaps more appreciative of his skill on the ball. Some young fans even adopted his haircut as well as buying replica shirts. Harder training made him fitter (eventually) than he had been at Spurs and he was given the freedom to operate wide behind the lone striker Jean-Pierre Papin, with no midfield covering duties. With OM, Waddle won three championships, and reached the French Cup Final and a European Cup Final and semi-final – all in three seasons.

After a difficult start, Waddle recalls he began to feel at home when he scored against PSG with an extravagant back-heel. Christian Bromberger identifies the moment when the OM crowd really took the Englishman to their hearts, not only for his style and his recognition of the fans’ importance – they certainly appreciated his willingness to sign autographs and to salute them at the end of matches – but also for his choice of game in which to shine. For the Marseillais, the local rival city is Bordeaux. In footballing terms, too, reports Bromberger, the Girondins and OM are sworn enemies since incidents in 1987. One of the Marseille fans’ favourite chants is an insult to their the Girondin rivals: ‘Bordelais, j’ai niqué ta mère / Sur la Cane . . ., Cane . . ., Canebière’ (Bromberger et al. 1995: 79–80). They seem to have little in common as towns. Bordeaux has had a right-wing municipality since the war. Marseille had in the 1980s a longstanding left-wing mayor, Socialist minister Gaston Defferre. The Bordeaux chairman Claude Bez, having inherited his business from his father, was seen as being born into money and right-wing. The OM Chairman Bernard Tapie, on the other hand, was a self-made man, on the political left, with the same irascible volubility as the locals (if in a more standard French accent). It was against this background, in April 1990, that the Englishman Waddle endeared himself forever to the Marseillais public during the crucial, end-of-season home derby against Bordeaux. Before the game OM were second in the League behind Bordeaux, and the title hung on the result. After 52 minutes of a rough and tense match Waddle broke the deadlock by scoring direct from a free-kick, thus earning his nickname ‘Magic Waddle’. He also scored the second goal, in the last minute, ensuring OM were practically certain to win the championship. He claims in his autobiography that his popularity remained such that he received a louder welcome back from the crowd at Papin’s testimonial than even JPP himself (Blair 2000: 165). His other enduringly memorable contribution (for the fans at least) was his winning goal in the quarter-finals of the European Cup in 1991 against the reigning champions AC Milan, when OM came of age in Europe. Waddle himself recounts how he had been so physically manhandled by Paolo Maldini that he ended up in hospital for two days with concussion and remembered nothing of his instinctive volley (Ambrosiano 2002b: 101). Eric Cantona – Still Chasing Rimbauds1 Just as the English do not really appreciate the impact made by Waddle in France, the French too may not really understand the stature attained by Cantona within the English game. Not that he did not show in French club football flashes of the talent that became the player’s stock-in-trade in the red of Manchester United, but that he seemed incapable of controlling his temper and remaining on good terms with his various clubs and his team-mates. A memorable TV image is of Cantona angrily throwing away his muddy Marseille shirt in 1989 as he walked out on yet another club. He does not figure in the French team of the century selected by the premier football annual (Chaumier and Rocheteau 2000: 121), who choose a midfield of Kopa, Giresse, Platini and Zidane, with Fontaine and Papin as strikers – noticeably all having made their name in the national team. For France Football’s jury of 34 players and managers he came only tenth in the French Player of the Century vote (France Football, 20 December 2000: 12). What both French and English fans might agree on is the impenetrability and proud independence of the man, moulded by a strong sense of justice and injustice, and for whom football fame and fortune were never enough to fill a life that he chose to redirect at the age of 31. The French media, in the topical puppet show Les Guignols de l’info, chose to caricature him and his southern accent as the harmless philosopher-poet with a vacuous epigram for every occasion. In Britain his image has borne forever the marks inflicted by the press following his drop-kick at the fan insulting him on being sent off at the Crystal Palace ground – for which misdemeanour he served a half-season ban and community service. Born in Marseille in 1966, Cantona emerged as a prospect far away from home, in the Auxerre youth coaching centre under the firm hand of Guy Roux. He made his debut in professional football with Auxerre in 1983, and moved on to Montpellier, Marseille and Nîmes, before moving briefly to Sheffield Wednesday in 1992, then winning English championships with Leeds, and Manchester United, where he was captain and the last vital piece of Alex Ferguson’s jigsaw before retiring in 1997. His 45 international caps were won, and 20 goals scored, between 1987 and 1995. David Ginola – Frog Prince One judge on France Football’s panel picking the French Player of the Century, a former team-mate at PSG, was the only one to vote for Ginola (as the fifth of his five selections), claiming he was the most gifted of all his choices, but had not won enough medals. In his last three seasons with PSG he helped them win two French Cups (1993, 1995), a French Championship (1994) and a League Cup (1995) – the most prolific period in the club’s history. He holds a unique double – Player of the Year in France in 1993/94 and in the English Premiership while playing for Tottenham in both the journalists and players polls in 1998/99 – an Anglo-French double that escaped both Glenn Hoddle, who won the French award playing for Monaco, but not the English one, and Eric Cantona, vice versa (Ridley 1998). His technical ability for Newcastle, Tottenham or Aston Villa, for all of whom he scored some memorable goals, was never in doubt, but his British managers, as well as his former BBC TV commentary colleagues, were often frustrated by what they perceived to be his lack of desire to put in the last 10 per cent of effort that the Premiership demands. Opposition supporters and managers often accused him of diving and feigning fouls against him. His own fans, including new ones at Tottenham such as Salman Rushdie, were very quickly won over (Rushdie 2000: 123–124). However, after good starts at his new clubs he maybe lost the desire to turn it on week-in weekout. His cultivation of an image of being above all a stylish player, well suited to advertising male beauty products on TV or on the catwalk and being part of the jet-set, did not help British managers love him. British football culture is too ingrained with the Protestant work ethic and working-class values. Born on the Côte d’Azur into a middle-class family of fonctionnaires, he had always been seen as a ‘pretty-boy’ player, the sort who allegedly carry a comb in their shorts. Having a mirror-image background to that of Kopa, his own take on this was to say: ‘If I had been little and ugly, nobody would have doubted my qualities as a footballer’ (Le Vaillant 1999). But he could not deny that he obviously enjoys the lifestyle and attention that his good looks have brought him. French national team bosses had other doubts about him. He is best remembered in France for losing the ball while trying to attack rather than keeping hold of the ball by the opposition corner-flag in the last minute of the last World Cup qualifying match against Bulgaria in November 1993. This led immediately to the goal that eliminated Gérard Houllier’s team from the 1994 Finals, and to Houllier’s angry comment that Ginola’s action was ‘criminal’. Blame for France’s elimination was no doubt unfairly heaped onto one man, and Ginola did play a further ten times for his country, but with Jacquet as manager looking for team players he never made the team for Euro 96 nor subsequent squads. If he does have a horror of injustice, it is less inwardly directed than in Cantona’s case; one way he has invested time in combating injustice is by stepping into Princess Diana’s shoes when invited by the UN to work for the antipersonnel-mines campaign. A professional whose career depends on the skill in his feet can make a point about children who have lost one or both of theirs. It may be reading too much into his roving UN ambassadorship to suggest he is making up for some unease about his father working on torpedoes in the Saint-Tropez arsenal. If his pride has been hurt, especially in the World Cup affair, he has fought to regain respect for the sake of his family, who were hurt by the criticism he received. He says: ‘I fight to please my nearest and dearest who shed tears when I was treated like dirt’ (Le Vaillant 1999). In 2001, he engaged one of the most expensive and high profile British law firms to defend him against his manager’s suggestion that he was overweight. Was he perhaps less confident he could rebut the charges by his performances on the pitch? The New France: from Mekloufi to Zidane Football, Immigration and Identity French football, like sport in most societies, has not remained immune from major social conflicts within the nation. The key socio-cultural conflict of postrevolutionary France from 1789 to 1945 was the battle between Catholic France and secular France, and this was reflected in the development in France of competing football leagues. Football’s integrative force proved stronger than this Franco-French quarrel and brought the federations and leagues together into a single national structure in the inter-war period. More recently football has reflected other major social issues: particularly those connected with immigration: multiculturalism, integration, racism. The significance of the racial composition of the national team and of its link to immigration has been an issue certainly since the 1958 era. The senior French football writer of the time, Jacques Ferran, as Marks (1999: 47) recalls, wrote an article in France Football entitled ‘Not to be confused: the French national team and French football’. In it he claimed that the most vital elements of the French national team (Kopa, the son of Polish immigrants, Fontaine, born to a Spanish mother in Marrakesh, and Piantoni, the son of Italian immigrants) did not constitute a coherent identity; the French team was ‘une salade russe’ [a Balkan salad], a hotchpotch of doctrines. Ferran’s concern about the lack of footballing cohesion of this group of individualists cannot hide, Marks claims, a wider anxiety about French society. This is not an isolated comment. Beaud and Noiriel (1990: 95) identify two strains of French writing about immigration and football: criticism of the heterogeneity of styles associated with influences from outside France; and a contrasting view, particularly since the 1960s, that immigration has been seen as an element that enriches the national game, and that football acts as a ‘melting pot’ for immigrants’ integration into French society (Marks: 1999: 48). We may characterise these approaches as the nationalistic and the multicultural. Franco–Algerian Relations: Mekloufi and Political Symbolism Whereas Kopa, born in France of Polish parents, aspired to be accepted as purely French and used football as a means of successful assimilation into French society, and was often portrayed as an example of how, in a meritocracy, hard work can lead to upward social mobility and success, one of his international colleagues chose to reject French identity and the chance to star in the 1958 World Cup. Rachid Mekloufi, born in French Algeria in 1937 (or 1936 – there is some doubt), was spotted by Saint-Etienne scouts in 1954, and came to France to play and turn professional. He won the world army football competition with France in 1957, represented the French national team four times, and appeared certain to be selected as a member of the French squad for Sweden. He and others were seen as a model of ‘fraternal and successful integration of the indigenous Arabic population and the large settler community in a French Algeria’ (Lanfranchi and Wahl 1996: 118). When, in April 1958, as part of the resistance to French colonial rule that turned into the Algerian War of Independence, the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) called on Algerian professional footballers in France to leave for Tunis where they were to set up an Algerian national team, Mekloufi and nine others heeded the call. Football was used as part of the Algerian struggle in other ways too: the withdrawal of ethnic clubs from colonial leagues, the bombing of football stadiums in Algeria and the execution of a leading political opponent at the French Cup Final. For four years, up to the negotiated end to the war and Algerian independence in 1962, Mekloufi played against other African, Eastern European and Asian national teams, beating many. Once the independent (Marxist) Algerian State was in place Mekloufi was unable to earn his living there as a professional sportsman, and was accepted back in France, despite threats to his life from the OAS, the ‘Secret Army’ of former white settlers who had fled Algeria on independence, dispossessed of their property. In May 1968 as the political storm clouds were again gathering over Paris, ten years after his ‘desertion’, he received the French Cup as captain of Saint-Etienne from the hands of General de Gaulle, who had been brought back to power to end the Algerian War. The President congratulated the players with the words: ‘La France, c’est vous.’ [You are France]. Mekloufi went back to Algeria on retiring as a player in 1970 to become coach to the national team and rose, by 1990, to become President of the Algerian national Football Federation, but not without criticism on the way for having continued his professional career in France (Lanfranchi and Wahl 1996: 119). None the less, he has remained for many people a political symbol of the Algerian struggle for independence, but also of Franco-Algerian reconciliation. He acknowledged all he owed to the Saint-Etienne coach Jean Snella, and said his happiest moment had been winning the world army championship with the French team.

 A Multicoloured France Challenged by the Extreme Right

If 1958 and 1968 were turning points in politics and society, as landmarks in the decolonisation process and in political stability as de Gaulle came into power, and in the liberalisation of social attitudes as a new society was heralded in the events of May, then May 1981 and the election of a socialist President was another step towards a more tolerant society and a less narrowly defined and defensive national identity. From our post-1998 perspective we can recognise the importance of the success of national teams of the 1980s in allowing the celebration in football of a multiracial aspect of French national identity. Under Mitterrand’s presidency, left-wing values, less nationalistic, were more dominant politically, but were coming to be challenged from the extreme right by the new nationalism of Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the Front national, as economic crises and unemployment pushed parts of society to look for scapegoats in the immigrant communities. Mitterrand’s France was represented by a team coming in part again from its immigrant communities. Under the leadership of Michel Platini, France’s multiracial team could be celebrated as a distinctive aspect of French national style in contrast to their World Cup opponents. Writing in 1986 about the 1982 match against Germany, Démerin recalls the tricolours’ multicoloured team representing ‘France from Dunkirk to Tamanrasset’, ‘playing football as beautiful as a fireworks display’, ‘the technicolour of France versus the black-and-white of Germany’ (Démerin 1986: 120–125). He describes the white face of the northern Frenchman Rocheteau and the bronzed features of Giresse from the south-west; the two players from French Africa: the coppercoloured face of Janvion from the Maghreb, the darker Tigana from sub-Saharan Africa (Mali); and the ebony of Marius Trésor from the French West Indies; and the Spanish origins of Hidalgo, Lopez and Amoros; and the three of Italian extraction, Ettori, Genghini, and Platini. At about the same time as this celebration of diversity in the national team, after the brave World Cup semi-final defeat and then the European Cup success of 1984, L ’Equipe interested itself in the origins of French football internationals and found that of the 660 individuals who had represented France since the beginnings of international matches at least 200 were of foreign extraction or from outside metropolitan France. At a time when immigrants made up over 10 per cent of the population and the workforce had 10–15 per cent of immigrants within it, L ’Equipe found the most highly represented groups were: North Africans: 7 per cent; Italians: 6.5 per cent; Poles: 6 per cent; Spanish: 3 per cent; French Overseas Departments and Territories: 1 per cent. The range and diversity were most obvious in the 1980s teams. But, in Beaud and Noiriel’s 1990 article, it was as if the immigrant origins of some of the 1958 team were being discovered for the first time. The racial makeup of the national side raised political debate during Euro 96, when Le Pen declared the French team to be ‘artificial’. He claimed certain players had chosen their nationality as a matter of expediency and that several ‘visibly did not know the words of the Marseillaise’. Later reiterating his point, he drew attention to numbers of players who were sons of immigrants (Le Monde, 26 June 1996). The 1998 squad contained many of these players, and was often described as reflecting the ‘cultural mosaic’ of contemporary France. Several players were born outside metropolitan France: Lama in French Guyana, Karembeu in New Caledonia, Vieira in Senegal, and Desailly in Ghana. Several were born in France of parents born outside of metropolitan France (Guadeloupe, Algerian Kabylia, Armenia, Mongolia, Argentina, Portugal) (see Marks 1999; Hare 2003). As we have seen, the presence of players of diverse origin is nothing new for the French team, and as French football professionalised, it was immigrants more than any other members of the working classes who saw football as a means of social advancement (Mignon 1999: 86–87). The geography of the origins within France of these players reflected the geography of immigration and employment in their different eras: players of Italian extraction from the south-east and the east of France; Poles from the small mining towns and villages serving the heavy industry and mining areas of the north and east; newer immigrants from the poorer banlieues of major cities like Paris and Lyon. The ethnic diversity of the French side has simply reflected different eras of immigration in a country that for economic reasons (post-war reconstruction) and ideological choice (political asylum) has welcomed foreigners, and attempted to assimilate or integrate them into the Republican melting pot. One such was named Zidane. Zidane and ‘une France black-blanc-beur’ Since the two goals he scored in the World Cup Final on 12 July 1998, a balding French Kabyle named Zinedine Zidane has not only won a newspaper poll for the most popular personality in France, but is also, arguably, the best-known Frenchman in the world. He became, within France, the symbol of the new multiethnic society, as the French victory was used very widely as a metaphor for successful French integration. His success, both on and off the pitch, is unparalleled. Born in Marseille in 1972, he attended the Cannes coaching academy, making his debut for Cannes in Division 1 just before his seventeenth birthday. He played for Bordeaux from 1992 to 1996, and was a finalist in the UEFA Cup. Moving to Italy, he acknowledges that he had to ‘work like a sheep’ to get much fitter in order to became the Zidane of 1998. He won two Italian championships with Juventus and was runner up in two European Champions Cup Finals. Often the star of French national teams’ performances, his technical brilliance took the game to new levels. In 1998 he was the fourth Frenchman to become European Player of the Year (Ballon d’Or). Having moved to Real Madrid in summer 2001 for the highest transfer fee in history, nearly 500 million francs, he scored the unforgettable decisive goal in Real’s Champions League victory in May 2002. His absence through injury for the first two matches of France’s Korean campaign showed how much the national team relied on him. Zidane, like Kopa in his time, is an obvious individual example of successful integration, but he also became a symbol of successful French integration in general. His family history is typical of many immigrants from North Africa: his father arrived from Algeria, in the Paris left-wing industrial belt in the 1960s, and moved to La Castellane in 1970, working as a warehouseman. In this poor Marseille estate his son learned to play football, becoming a local hero, serving as a model of social integration in an area where unemployment is 40 per cent. In 1998, from La Castellane to the Champs-Elysées, second-generation North African immigrants (les Beurs) chanted this shy and humble man’s name. Girls wrote Zizou on their cheeks in lipstick. Greeting the team coach on the ChampsElysées, Beurs waved Algerian flags alongside the French tricolour, showing their pride in their dual cultural identity. As historian Benjamin Stora remarked: ‘This closes a chapter of French history because it shows one can remain faithful to an Algerian nationalist father and yet be for France, that one can be a Moslem and be fully French’ (Graham 1998). During the Finals, spectators experienced a rise in solidarity among French people from all cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Both President Chirac and his socialist prime minister, Jospin, promoted the metaphor of ‘football team equals nation’. Discussion of the multiracial nature of the side moved from the sports pages to the front pages and was even covered abroad (Lichfield 1998; Desporetes 1998). The phrase ‘black-blanc-beur’ was created on the pattern of the national colours (bleu-blanc-rouge) to describe the special Frenchness of the team and the nation’s unity in diversity. The view that France was changing was expressed by demographer Michèle Tribalat, interviewed in Libération (Simonnot 1998). She saw in the gusto with which the multicoloured team sang the Marseillaise and in the joyful nationalism of supporters from all backgrounds a moment of identification with the nation. She compared the result of French republican integration of ethnic minorities with the German team of all-white faces and blond hair and no immigrant players of Turkish origin, concluding that the French system visibly opts for ‘universalism’ with an open nationality law whereas Germany’s ethnic concept of the nation means Turkish children remain Turkish. The French Republican approach to ethnic diversity has not been uncontroversial. A policy of ‘assimilation’ has generally been adopted. This means the cultural assimilation of ethnic minorities in a centralised, indivisible Republic, as opposed to the American notion of ‘integration’ meaning maintaining cultural difference yet still claiming a shared national project. The French approach has assumed traditionally that everyone can be French, but only by losing their distinctive community identities. Communitarianism has been rejected in favour of universalism, in principle, although issues such as the wearing of the Muslim headscarf in French State schools, for example, have been resolved in a fudge in relation to what previously might have been considered strict secular Republican nationalism. Following the oil crises of the 1970s and the subsequent economic difficulties of the mid-1980s, racism increased in France, along with alienation and social exclusion of children of first-generation immigrant families. Social problems of housing and schooling, rising inequalities, petty crime and antisocial behaviour, feelings of insecurity, and disillusionment with orthodox political parties that had failed to solve the problems, were seized upon by the extreme right. Le Pen helped set a political agenda where new nationality laws made it more difficult for children born in France of foreign parentage to become French. What the World Cup victory seems to have done is to provide a ready metaphor to discuss these issues: either the multiracial national team was presented as proof of integrated cultural and ethnic diversity contributing to a shared national project, or the solidarity of successful teamwork was highlighted as evidence of assimilated ‘Frenchness’ on the part of ethnically diverse players. Zidane was central to this political and social metaphor, and in this respect his celebrity has burrowed far deeper into the national psyche than his predecessors Kopa and Platini. The debate was not proof that the long-term problems of the banlieues had been solved. Franco-Algerian Identity and the Deprived Suburbs post-1998 A senior British newspaper correspondent in Paris commented on the reactions to the World Cup victory from the President downwards as underlining France’s hunger for good news (Graham 1998). A sense of depression, he felt, had hitherto deflected attention from areas where France has been a winner. This change of national mood and purpose seemingly went wider than those who saw the symbolism of Zidane as the central message of the World Cup. Patrick Mignon has on the other hand been more cautious in his interpretation. It was premature to talk of a victory for integration, of an inclusive nationalism, of a nation’s improved self-image, of a defeat for the Front national, and of new attitudes towards immigrants in the deprived suburbs. He adds that the celebrations of 12 July were more symbols of an appeal for unity – since that unity was far from real (Mignon 1999). Ironically, one of the areas that most typifies the problems of France’s deprived suburban areas is the symbolically important area around the Stade de France. Much of the département of Saint-Denis is still an area of social deprivation, with a high proportion of immigrants of first or subsequent generations. High unemployment, low educational achievement, and other forms of social exclusion have, unsurprisingly, not been immediately improved by an urban regeneration effect that was one of the objectives in siting the national stadium in this northern Paris suburb. The honeymoon period following the World Cup victory could not obscure social reality for ever. The frustrations of the area are illustrated by the suspension of all matches in a local amateur football league in SaintDenis in April 1999, following violence between players and among supporters. As reasons for this frustration Mignon (2000: 254) cites ‘poverty, low expectations, racism, and the rise of communitarianism among football teams organised around ethnic origins’, which contradicts the idea of the Republican melting pot. One key event that tested the new France in general, and Saint-Denis in particular, was the organisation of the first-ever full international match between France and Algeria, at the Stade de France in October 2001, a full four decades after the Algerian War of Liberation. The watching French Prime Minister and Minister for Sport and millions of TV viewers were reminded that the distinct double identity of French Algerians and their place within French society are still issues. The match was built up as a moment of reconciliation between the two peoples and therefore another symbol of the new integrated France at peace with itself, but was brought to an untimely and embarrassing end by a pitch invasion – embarrassing that is for French football’s officials and for the political establishment. Before the event Libération presciently described the match as ‘a matter of collective identity, not that of the French, whose thirst for identity had been satisfied by the triumphal 1998 epic, but the identity of Algerians by birth, by family connections or by tradition (i.e. living in France) who are having difficulty in finding their bearings between their country of reference [Algeria] which is in turmoil and their host country [France] where the road to integration is not free of obstacles and dead-ends’ (Helvig 2001). The match attracted a huge number of spectators with North African connections, underlining the symbolic importance they attach to football as a site of identity formation. Outside the stadium, before the game, Franco-Algerian spectators living in the poor districts around the national stadium were reported as chanting that they were playing at home; then the French players were whistled during the warmup and when their names were announced (with the exception of Zidane); the French national anthem was also copiously whistled; and finally, in the seventyfifth minute, large numbers of young, (apparently) mainly second-generation North African immigrants ran onto the pitch, some carrying Algerian flags, past insufficient numbers of stewards. The events continued in the streets afterwards, as a few cars drove around with horns blowing and Algerian flags flying though wound-down windows, an ironic reminder of July 1998. (See reports in L ’Humanité, Le Monde, Libération, and Ouest-France, 6 to 8 October 2001.) The press quoted many older Algerian immigrants who have become integrated or have assimilated French aspirations and values as being deeply embarrassed by the behaviour of the second generation of immigrants. French officials and politicians appeared shocked or nonplussed. It is difficult to see the events as simply an expression of over-exuberance, since everyone knew full well that such an event was charged with so much political symbolism. In the security preparations for the match it might have been forgotten that before and during the Algerian war of liberation, football matches in colonial Algeria were key locations for anti-French demonstrations and indeed for violence (Fatès 2003). One interpretation of the actions of the young people from the poor suburbs is that they were a defiant affirmation of their Algerian roots, or indeed of their double attachment to the cultures of France and Algeria. What is worth underlining is that it was non-violent; there were few arrests. Regarding their identity as French citizens, however, they were no doubt expressing frustration that hopes for an end to exclusion and discrimination that the French World Cup victory had raised have thus far proved unrealistic. French society remains one where the Republican values of equality and solidarity are no more matched by social reality than in any other Western European country. These events tended to confirm Mignon’s earlier conclusions that ‘public intervention has been far too inadequate when football is located in its widest social context, and placed against a backdrop of serious social disadvantage’ (Mignon 2000: 254). Conclusion Representing the national side has always seemed most important to French supporters. If football mattered, it had always been at international rather than club level. Cantona and Ginola might rightly be feted in England, but they will not be remembered with as much warmth in France as Papin or Blanc, because they did not shine as brightly when representing their country. Foreign stars playing for French clubs could reach cult status, like Stopyra or Waddle at OM, or Rai and Weah at PSG, but such status remained local. If football does now matter in France, it is because it has gradually imprinted itself on the national consciousness as a vector of national values and identity through the national side. For many years the identity it seemed best to carry was one the French recognised in the figure of Astérix, a stylish and wily individualist capable of winning skirmishes but whose way of life remained under threat from the Roman Empire. Too many times the national team (or a national representative at club level) failed at the final hurdle, and could blame the fates. But perhaps playing with style was more important than winning. This was L ’Equipe’s view in 1998: since France were not going to win, at least they must play time-honoured champagne football à la Platini. But since the World Cup victory French football teams are no longer automatically seen as an analogy for a supposedly tired nation, suffering from an inferiority complex, fearful of the challenges of modernisation and of social integration. It was through football that the French discovered they were not eternal losers. The 2002 World Cup squad and officials were criticised therefore for having lost – for having lost so tamely certainly, and to such mediocre opposition, but mainly for having lost, and heads had to roll. The idea of a ‘France qui gagne’ may or may not prove more durable than the other metaphor represented by the national team of 1998 to 2000: that of a multicultural France at ease with itself. For a few months football was used to promote an inclusive and ethnically diverse view of the nation, that saw integration of the children of the new banlieues as possible. The team’s multiethnicity corresponded to that of the new France and represented success rather than problems. One man more than any other symbolised this. French football had spawned other stars, also of immigrant origins, Kopa and Platini notably, brilliant footballers, who had also had to go abroad for their greatest achievements at club level. Yet they had never come to represent such a central social and political issue as did Zidane. The complexities of post-colonialism have been articulated in France via football. Franco-Algerian relations in particular, which are the central trauma of post-Second World War France, have found expression from Mekloufi to Zidane through the national team. Mekloufi became a symbol of the struggle for separation and then of reconciliation between the two communities. After two generations of immigration from North Africa, Zidane became a symbol of successful integration into the Republic and of its progressive values of universalism and meritocracy. For a while French citizens could believe optimistically in the French approach to cultural diversity in the twenty-first century, until social realities of inequality and the threat of communitarianism and territorialism pushed their way into the news, and made them doubt again. It was again, however, via football that reconciliation and integration were supposed to be celebrated in the symbolic match in Saint-Denis between France and Algeria, and where the distance still to be travelled on all sides was revealed to a watching nation. Some of this lost ground might have been recovered if the national team had been able to renew the black-blanc-beur spirit by an impressive World Cup, but their spectacularly premature exit followed JeanMarie Le Pen reaching the second round of the Presidential election, and France once again seemed to have its back to the wall. That all of these events from 1998 to 2002 should be mediated through television tells us something in general about its role in modern France, and in particular about its transformation of football from a local participatory event into a cross between a recurrent theme in the nation’s public debate about its own identity and an audiovisual homeentertainment commodity. The next chapter will examine the symbiotic relations of television and football.

Note

1.       Ball and Shaw (1996: 121) quote this bon mot by a reader of the Independent in 1995 (with apologies to Dorothy Parker). For an excellent chapter on Cantona see Edworthy (2002).