WORLD CUP VICTORY DEMANDS THAT OF ALL DESCRIPTIONS ARE INVITED TO
A multicultural side delivered in Russia – and sent a message to the forces of division. Colin Randall reports from Nice
Amuch-travelled young Emirati friend with a lifelong passion for top-level football neatly captured one of the heartening truths of France’s 4-2 World Cup victory over Croatia.
As the final whistle approached, she posted a telling social media message: “Africa is about to win the World Cup.”
If that was one evocative definition of the mixed ethnicity of the squad representing France in Russia, she also repeated another – a French team photograph accompanied by the slogan: “The one moment no one minds about immigration.”
Thorny community problems cannot be put right by the mere presence on a football pitch of black, brown and olive faces alongside white ones.
Nor are they resolved if a little of the same diversity is seen among the hundreds of thousands of jubilant supporters cramming Paris’s most famous avenue, the Champs Elysees, where revellers overwhelmingly outnumbered a minority of trouble-makers.
But there are lessons France can or should learn from the sense of pride and joy rightly felt by all sections of its society.
About half the players taken by the manager, Didier Deschamps, to the 2018 World Cup finals are of African or, to a lesser extent, Arab descent.
The starting 11 for Moscow’s biggest game included two players, Paul Pogba and Ngolo Kante, who have been described as devout Muslims.
Throughout the squad are men who might have opted, because of their parents’ origins, to accept international recognition from countries including Senegal, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Algeria, Guinea, Angola and Mali.
And there’s the nub. They chose to play for France.
“I was born here and grew up here,” said Corentin Tolisso, one of the substitutes on Sunday and the son of Togo immigrants.
Kylian Mbappe, 19, the gifted star of France’s side, spent his childhood in Bondy, a poor district 16 kilometres from the Stade de France.
Encouraged by committed parents, a Cameroonian father who played and managed local football and an Algerian mother who made the top level of French women’s basketball, Mbappe showed his potential from early childhood. With their guidance, he also demonstrated his national allegiance, singing La Marseillaise and, when he had barely started school, promising one day to play for France.
Any French citizen basking in the reflected glory of the World Cup win should also embrace the multicultural nature of that achievement.
Some were undoubtedly seduced by the odious rhetoric of Jean-Marie Le Pen, anti-immigrant, anti-Islam and anti-Semitic founder of the far-right Front National, whose contrived grievances included the number of black faces in the national football team.
The party has now been renamed National Rally as Mr Le Pen’s less confrontational daughter Marine tries, to varying effect, to present it as “a party like any other”.
Yet it continues to attract those who embraced her father’s unpleasant view of life. When the world acclaims Emmanuel Macron’s 66 per cent haul of the vote in last year’s presidential election, it overlooks the disturbing fact that 10.6 million French voters still supported Ms Le Pen.
In communities dominated by immigrants from North and sub-Saharan Africa and their descendants, all people – and especially the young – have an important role in building on the revival of the Black-BlancBeur (black, white, Arab) ethos of France’s first World Cup win 20 years ago.
Let Mbappe, with his inspirational skills and love of country, be their role model, not gangsters.
But if the feel-good benefits are to endure in a way that the 1998 spirit did not, Mr Macron and his government must also recognise their responsibility.
That is to show all French citizens that France’s World Cup exploits represent a collective victory and that they are, whatever their roots, equally welcome and valued.
The president takes pride in pursuing a reforming programme even when, as now, it carries the price of diminished popular approval.
He has spoken nobly about discrimination. Now he should act, or order his ministers to act, to render these evils as unFrench and anti-republican as they are theoretically illegal.
If Mr Macron adopts bold measures to tackle deprivation in the banlieues, and to shame those who cling to old hatreds, he will deserve to be remembered as a great head of state.
But if the president simply reverts to concentrating on economic and structural modernisation, his words for Les Bleus in Russia will soon enough come to be seen as hollow posturing.
Macron’s fine words and reforming zeal cannot be window dressing. The president needs bold action as well
Hugo Lloris came through the mixed zone a little later than his teammates, the World Cup already carried off in the arms of Raphael Varane, the France captain left to sum up his emotions and those of his victorious team.
To put into words what it meant to lift football’s premier prize at the end of an absorbing final against Croatia, the culmination of an absorbing four weeks of football.
He was only the second Frenchman to have had the honour as captain, following on from Didier Deschamps – his manager now – in 1998, achieving what even beaten finalist Zinedine Zidane could not, in 2006.
Lloris, though, struggled to recall what had just gone on at a sodden Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. Considering the magnitude of the moment? Little wonder.
“I didn’t think too much because, in front of me, I knew there was my grandmother, my father, my brother, my sister, my wife and two kids,” he said, smile wide. “It means a lot for me and is a great emotional moment.
“There is plenty of work behind this. I want to say thank you to all my teammates for giving me the privilege to lift this trophy. It’s a great moment for us and French football.”
It felt even better given France’s most recent appearance at a major tournament. In the European Championship two years ago, in front of their fans and on their own patch, Deschamps’ side were beaten in the showpiece 1-0 by Portugal in extra time.
Lloris played that night at the Stade de France, one of nine members of the World Cup squad this past month to carry the scars from that night in Saint-Denis. It made victory on Sunday all the more sweet.
“We didn’t know after the final of the Euros that we would have another chance in our careers,” he said. “We have made it with a lot of effort – the key was mental and team spirit because from the beginning even if we have a lot of great players, we were all ready to work for the team.”
The collective effort throughout the World Cup ensured Lloris was not left to regret an embarrassing individual mistake right at its death. Against Croatia, with the score at 4-1 and 21 minutes remaining, he attempted to take Samuel Umtiti’s back-pass beyond Mario Mandzukic and watched in horror as the ball ricocheted back and into his goal. Thankfully for Lloris, France held on to triumph 4-2.
“The most important thing is the win and that I made the save [from Ante Rebic] at 1-1,” he said. “I would have preferred to not concede the second goal, but we still won.
“We worked hard a lot together to reach this level and now we can enjoy; we have left our stamp on French football. One mistake in a World Cup, sure it’s in the final, but the score was already done,.” And anyway, by that time, France’s fourth had killed the game. Kylian Mbappe got it, offering another example of his superstar potential, at 19 years old becoming the second teenager to score in a World Cup final, after Pele in 1958. With four goals in all in Russia, Mbappe was later voted the tournament’s best young player. Few would argue.
“He has a great potential to become one of the best players in the world,” Lloris said. “He has achieved a lot already. It’s difficult to get success in football – you have to be in the right team at the right moment.”
And now, Lloris had a World Cup winner’s medal dangling from his neck. “It’s the best moment of my career,” he said, smile still wide. “And now I need to enjoy it.”