PARIS IS ON EDGE FOR GAME NIGHT –
“We will use scanners to check fans”
THE Stade de France could be found this week in a wet, windswept ghost land. Across the road a line of cafes tick over. No more than that. Their takings have fallen by at least 30 per cent since three terrorists, one chillingly wearing a Bayern Munich shirt to mingle in with the carefree crowd, brought death and fear to sport here on November 13.
The next day the bar staff were back in to clear up. Engin, a 31-year-old Frenchman of Turkish descent, is manager of the Events Cafeopposite Gates JandH of the stadium, near where one of the suicide bombers blew himself up.
While the municipal authorities blasted away blood off t he pavement with water sprays, he claims he picked up some remains of the terrorist whose face he remembers seeing the night before.
The police siege the following Wednesday in the Saint-Denis district—a drug-riddled neighbourhood in the north of the capital — was eerily close to the Stade de France, built for the 1998 World Cup and proclaimed as an architectural symbol of modern France.
Tomorrow afternoon’s France versus Italy RBS 6 Nations match will be the first event to be staged at the Stade since the sickening bomb blasts three months ago which halted the football friendly between France and Germany. The stadium is a 25 25- minute Metro journey from Place de la Republique in central Paris. There, flags, flowers and candles adorn the famous monument.
The names of the 130 people killed across Paris in November and in the Charlie Hebdo killings the previous January are typed, black on white paper, and stuck on the statue. Not so much as their dates of birth are recorded. These, mostly, are people who never had an obituary. One is simply commemorated as a ‘Parisienne anonyme’.
Four policemen stand on a pavement nearby. Three more, armed, eye people up and down on the corner of the square. Police cars zoom here and there, night and day.
A state of emergency still exists in France, with president Francois Hollande indicating he wants it to go on pretty much indefinitely. With the economy struggling, a defiant pose on security is likely to play well among right-wing voters in next year’s elections. It is into a Paris on a war footing that international sport returns.
Yesterday the French team were at their training base south of Paris. Guy Noves, the new national coach, was announcing his team to face the Italians. He has picked four debutants, i ncluding Sevens specialist Virimi Vakatawa, in an attempt to add some running elan to French play after a dismal World Cup.
‘ I have been thinking about rugby all week,’ he told me. ‘But now you are asking me about being back at the Stade de France, I feel a heavy responsibility. It is important to show that life must a always go on. Always.’
President Hollande, a football r ather t han r ugby man ( he s supports Rouen and is a friend of Michel Platini), is expected to attend the game. Security will be extreme. For the first time, there will be so- called ‘filter dams’ 50 yards from the stadium walls.
With Italy traditionally bringing a small travelling contingent, only 50,000 spectators are expected inside the 80,000-capacity arena, but every one of them will be searched at the initial checkpoints, b before moving on to the stadium proper, where they will be searched again. The idea is to stop a buildup of people outside the stadium itself. ‘Electric scanners will be used at both stages,’ a government source told Sportsmail.
Once all police and security services, including snipers, are taken into account, there will be around 1,200 people dedicated to protecting the stadium, many of them undercover among the crowd. Sniffer dogs will also be used.
It is a far cry from the happy days of France 98, when the hosts’ multiracial team was illuminated by the great Zinedine Zidane, of Algerian descent, Marcel Desailly, born in Ghana, and Youri Djorkaeff, of Polish and Armenian parents.
At the stadium they graced, France will try to regain her reputation for hosting major events safely, before staging the European Championship this summer. Whether sport will manage to recapture something of its lost innocence is another matter entirely.