Championship squad lost its luster in wake of ‘race quota’ furor
It is 20 years since the night France won the World Cup on home soil, and a powerful myth was born on the streets of Paris.
The shirts were “bleu, blanc et rouge” (blue, white and red) and the squad that had united to beat Brazil, 3-0, with two goals from Zinedine Zidane, was “black, blanc, beur,” the latter term a colloquialism for French of North African descent.
There had been dissenting voices from far-right politicians, yet France fell in love with Zidane, whose parents were Algerian immigrants, and players born, or with roots, in the Caribbean, Senegal, Ghana, New Caledonia, Portugal, Spain, Armenia, Argentina, as well as France.
That night on the ChampsElysees, an enormous crowd embraced the myth of a harmonious France.
It was a myth that soon began to crack.
In 2011, website Mediapart exposed a discussion on race quotas in France’s age-group teams. It was alleged that soccer chiefs believed there were “too many blacks and Arabs and not enough whites”.
Then national coach Laurent Blanc, a defender on the 1998 team, reportedly signed off on a quotas plan.
“It seems that we keep producing the same type of player: big, strong, powerful,” Blanc supposedly said at a meeting in 2010. “Who is big, strong, powerful? The blacks.”
In the storm that followed, Blanc apologized and was cleared of any wrongdoing by Sports Minister Chantal Jouanno and a federation inquiry, but the affair tore the 1998 squad apart.
The majority supported Blanc, including his Ghanaborn centerback partner Marcel Desailly and Zidane, who told L’Equipe that Blanc “certainly isn’t racist”. Others were less forgiving. Senegal-born midfielder Patrick Vieira said: “It’s scandalous! These are serious remarks.”
Guadeloupe-born defender Lilian Thuram said Blanc’s apology “did not live up to the severity of the proposal”.
Leftback Patrice Evra thought Thuram pompous, saying: “Just because you walk around with books about slavery, glasses and a hat that doesn’t make you Malcom X.”
Meanwhile, forward Christophe Dugarry also resented Thuram and claimed the former Juventus man had said on the day of the ’98 final: “Come on blacks, we’re doing a photo together.’”
Looking back on the legacy of that triumph, midfielder Christian Karembeu said: “It is France with diversity, with different ethnicities and different religions. Voil la France! It’s multicultural and one has to accept that as well. Football is a catalyst for uniting a people.”