After haunting sirens and butchery, two doves were a simple riposte to terror
One week on from the attacks in Paris and, as France remains defiant, The Mail on Sunday’s JONATHAN McEVOY reports from the match between Lorient and Paris Saint-Germain at Stade du Moustoir to discover fans with a Gallic shrug and a party-like atmosphere
TWO little children, a boy and a girl, each held a dove in the middle of a Brittany pitch. Three hundred miles north east of here, in Paris, haunting sirens were said still to be blaring out on its streets, eight days after the horror of terrorist butchery left its mark.
But in Lorient, at the Stade du Moustoir, they opened a wooden box that stood between the two children and out flew 11 doves of peace, the last of the day’s autumnal sun on their backs.
And so sport bared its immortal soul.
It was a simple, moving riposte to the three attackers who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France a week ago last Friday, causing chaos following France’s friendly against Germany and setting in motion the killing of 130 innocent people.
The little piece of theatre, ahead of the Ligue 1 match between Lorient and Paris Saint-Germain, was a defiant way of saying that football is a part of French national life and no amount of hateful bombing can stop us playing.
But, it must be said, the defiance was worn with a welcome Gallic shrug. It came dressed up in good spirits and waving 7,000 flags, equally split between the orange club colours of Lorient and the blue, red and white of the Tricolour. The mood was strangely party-like.
There was a fine rendition of La Marseillaise. This time it was sung with first-language elocution, unlike the best efforts of the England fans who empathetically joined with their French counterparts in belting it out at Wembley last Tuesday.
But it was no better for that. Indeed, a French journalist who heard both renditions told me he preferred the Wembley version. ‘You could have sung ‘la-la-la’ and we would still have appreciated it,’ he said. ‘It was very moving, very special.’
Amid the singing and waving here, there was the most impeccably observed minute’s silence I have ever come across inside a football stadium.
Although no away fans were permitted at French matches this weekend, a security measure by order of the Interior Minister, a few fans held PSG scarves above their heads.
The Ligue 1 leaders, by dint of geography, carried the greatest symbolic weight on the country’s return to domestic football. Midfielder Javier Pastore, then away on international duty with Argentina, and his team-mate, goalkeeper Salvatore Sirigu, lost two friends during the atrocities. The victims, who ran Chez Livio, a pizzeria in the Neuilly area of the capital frequented by PSG players, were shot dead at the Bataclan.
Others of the club’s stars admitted to feeling nerves at returning to France. David Luiz, the one-time Chelsea defender who was away with Brazil, said: ‘It is my job but if it were up to me, I’d not go back.’ Uruguayan striker Edinson Cavani agreed.
But as Frederic Thiriez, president of the Ligue de Football Professionnel, said: ‘Playing football is an act of resistance in the face of barbarism. After the pain, after the tears, life must go on. Sportsmen, just like artists, can set an example.’
Actually, the little town of Lorient, with its tabacs and bistros and its port, felt no more threatening to me than Henley-on-Thames in regatta week.
One of the few visible reminders of recent horrors came at the town hall next door to the stadium, where the flags were officially at half-mast.
There were hardly any more police in evidence than on a summer’s day on an English high street. Two lady officers chatted idly, the guns at their side the only faint whiff of ultimate authority. For the most part the security was handled by men in fluorescent yellow jackets and with conspicuously good grace.
They patted every fan down, boys with scarves and bobble hats, an old chap in red trousers and a Panama, a young woman in a wheelchair.
But the mood was relaxed. Sam Allardyce, the Sunderland manager, literally skipped along the concourse to the music from the child’s fan zone in the adjoining field, before turning up to sit in the posh seats.
Fans sipped their beers and ate their baguettes. There was an air of calm among small, smiling family groups. Delphine Cavez had travelled here from central Brittany, with her son Garvan, 11, and daughter Kyrian, nine.
‘We are not nervous at all,’ she said. ‘We have come here to celebrate all that is best about football and France and liberty. Being away from Paris, we are less afraid anyway.’
There was never any question about whether this match would go ahead, unlike the Belgian ProLeague meeting between Lokeren and Anderlecht. The fixture was deemed ‘high risk’, there not being enough police officers available after their resources were redirected to the unfolding terrorist threat in Brussels, to ensure safety.
Ahead of Euro 2016 in France, that postponement was a sad reminder of what watching football on the continent may sometimes now be like.
For the record, PSG hung on to win 2-1, through first-half goals from Hervin Ongenda and Blaise Matuidi. They go 13 points clear.
But, of course, the scoreline in no way represented Paris’s grandest victory of the night.