LES BLUES: WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS
LE FRANCE: THANK YOU FOR MAKING US PROUD
PARIS – Hundreds of thousands of ecstatic French fans celebrated the return of their World Cup winning football team on Monday, jumping and chanting “We Are The Champions” as their bus paraded down the Champs Elysees before a special presidential reception.
“Les Bleus”, a dynamic, young team that won an open, fast-paced final 4-2 with Croatia in Moscow, appeared at the Elysee palace, where they burst into a spontaneous rendition of the “La Marseillaise” national anthem with President Emmanuel Macron and his wife.
“Thank you for having made us proud,” Macron told the players in the presidential palace’s gardens. “Never forget where you come from: all the clubs across France that trained you.”
More than 300,000 people filled the Champs Elysees, the area around the Arc de Triomphe and the Place de la Concorde on Sunday night, partying into the early hours, singing the Marseillaise, setting off firecrackers and blaring horns until the sun rose.
“We had so much fun last night, the city was full of joy, so much celebration,” a woman dressed in red, white and blue who had made her way out to Charles de Gaulle airport told BFM TV. “All we want is a wave from the players.”
Newspapers hailed a second World Cup for France, after their first victory on home soil in 1998.
But some were keen to put that phrase to one side, seeing in it a sense of separateness, even if it was meant positively.
“We’re not in 1998,” said Mounir Mahjoubi, the secretary of state for digital affairs, whose parents emigrated from Morocco. “We’re not still celebrating ‘Black-Blanc-Beur’, we’re celebrating brotherhood,” he said of the current team.
For Macron, who became president last year at the age of 39, leading his political movement to victory against the odds, the success is also likely to have positive repercussions after a slump in the polls amid a host of economic reforms. The Paris metro system got into the celebratory mood, announcing the names of a number of stations were being briefly changed to honor the players and coach, Didier Deschamps. Notre-Dame des Champs station was relabeled “Notre Didier Deschamps”, and Victor Hugo was switched to “Victor Hugo Lloris” after the captain and goalkeeper.
On Monday morning, the aftereffects of Sunday night’s frenetic revelry were still visible. A number of smashed windows, an overturned car and graffiti scrawled here and there, including the phrase “Liberte, Egalite, Mbappe”, a reference to the national motto “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite”.