[update below] [2nd update below] [3rd update below] [4th update below] [5th update below]
I am presently watching, as I write, the triumphal descent of Les Bleus—who just arrived from Moscow—down the Champs-Élysées in the open top double-decker bus. The crowd—who number in the high six figures, maybe a million, who knows?—is naturally delirious. What a spectacle. After yesterday’s wild-and-crazy final, aptly described by one observer as truly bonkers—if anyone wants to know what I thought of the game as it unfolded, here’s my running Facebook commentary—I went in to Paris to check out the ambiance. La folie furieuse, comme on dit. People were so happy. I took a few short videos, which I tweeted here, here, and here. My wife, who’s down south in Sète, took some pics (here) of the celebrations there. The ‘black-blanc-beur’ thing of ephemeral 1998 fame, which was subject to so much mythologizing, certainly seemed real to me yesterday. The multitudes in Paris—younger rather than older, naturally—were as multiracial/ethnic as you can get in this country, and with everyone so happy and communing together. And as both my wife and I observed, there were far fewer Algerian (and Moroccan, Tunisian etc) flags than in 1998. The young people of Maghrebi origin—not to mention African—were waving the tricolore. It’s a new generation out there, who barely remember 1998, if at all—Kylian Mbappé wasn’t even born—and whose identities are not constructed in the same way as those who are now in their 30s and 40s.
I have more to say and could drone on—for sharp commentary, I refer all to my friend Akram Belkaïd’s blog—but will end this post now, with an open letter to Didier Deschamps by faithful AWAV reader Michel Persitz, who lives in the south of France and goes by the nom de plume Massilian, which he sent me earlier today and that I am taking the liberty of copying-and-pasting
Thank you Didier !
Thank you for resisting all kinds of pressures and having built such a beautiful team of inspiring brilliant young sportsmen who love France, respect the republic and sing the Marseillaise without back thoughts.
Thank you Didier !
Because until late into the night, young people made a great, noisy, joyful, parade on scooters, motorcycles, cars, in the streets of Marseille, waving French flags.
Not so long ago, but with a different coach and a different team, I witnessed noisy parades, with many of the same youth waving Algerian flags because of one stupid demagog brilliant player.
Thank you Didier !
We had the greatest need to teach love of France to our young ones. You showed that hard work, solidarity and fraternity do bring better results than individual egos.
On the other hand, Didier, you gave us a kind of “Französische Mannschaft”, rather cold blooded, solid, very lucid, very technical, very realistic, but whose game aside from occasional brilliant flares of great talent is not that exciting to watch. The contrast with the fiery Croatian, Argentinian, Uruguyan, Belgium teams was striking. Yet I know, they all lost.
I guess you can’t have it all and if I have to choose, considering the benefits for morale of the country, I prefer a winning team. And I do enjoy the perfume of victory. Twenty years ago I was revving up my motorcycle engine and blasting my horn on the Champs-Elysées for the greatest pleasure of my ten years old son screaming and waving his arms behind me.
Football is fine, it is a highly popular sport, but it is only a game. The sudden tsunami that is taking over the country by storm after such a victory and which turns every brave Frenchman into a brilliant, heroic, proud, two-stars Frenchman, amazes me and also scares me a little !
During the world cup, the hazard made me read a book by the great Argentinian writer Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-1999) : “Journal de la guerre au cochon”(1969). I was struck by this sentence : “The strength of demagogues is that they make outcasts aware of their dignity.”
Amitiés triomphales !
Michel
Très bien, though I am personally not worried about some future demagogue channeling the collective joy on the streets and squares of France last night, let alone toward nefarious ends.
À propos, the Bleus’ victory has knocked every other story off the news here today. Nothing on the unbelievable Trump-Putin meeting, which is dominating commentary on Facebook and Twitter feeds from people stateside. More on that very soon.
UPDATE: Vox has a six-minute video (July 10th), which is well worth watching, on why “France produces the most World Cup players.” Spoiler alert: it has to do with immigration, but not only.
2nd UPDATE: FT Paris correspondent Simon Kuper has a nice piece (July 18th) in the New Statesman, “A victorious World Cup team made in the multiracial Paris banlieues: Football is the bit of French society where I’ve seen integration work best.”
Kuper has a similar one in Le Monde dated July 19th, “Des terrains de banlieue au stade Loujiniki, une éclatante réussite d’intégration.”
Don’t miss the post (July 12th), by Australian sports sociologist Darko Dukic, on the Run Repeat blog, “Most World Cup talent are born in France (data analysis).”
3rd UPDATE: Everyone is au courant by now (July 20th) of the exchange between Gérard Araud and Trevor Noah, and particularly Noah’s response to the French ambassador, which has gone viral on social media. I found Noah’s response pretty good, but particularly like the reaction on Facebook by my (Indian-born) friend Leela Jacinto, of the English service of France 24
This identity business is so boring! So, the French ambassador could have been a bit more nuanced. But know what, just ask the players & they’ve reiterated, individually, time & again, they’re French. As I’ve snapped at countless clueless, well-meaning folks, ‘I’m not about to be your little brown girl in the ring. I have a US passport, French residency & I feel at home & a stranger anywhere. So stop telling me who I am.’ When I see first-hand how countries in Asia, Mideast, Africa treat their own immigrants/refugees & their diasporas wank on about hyphenated identities, assimilation blah-blah, I see stones pelted from glass houses. The point is, do you have equal rights, face discrimination – that’s the issue. If you know a country, language, culture well for whatever reason, that’s great. But your identity is your own bloody problem, so stop boring me.
À propos, see Zach Beauchamp’s post (July 19th) on Vox, “Trevor Noah’s feud with France over race, identity, and Africa, explained: The feud involves the World Cup, jokes, differing ideas of citizenship, and Noah’s French accent.”
See as well the provocative commentary (July 20th) by Hudson Institute research fellow Benjamin Haddad, who’s French, in The American Interest, “Multiculturalism and the World Cup: Why American liberals celebrating the French team’s ‘Africanness’ are making common cause with Jean-Marie Le Pen.”
4th UPDATE: See the intriguing analysis by Alternatives Économiques journalist Vincent Grimault, posted June 8th on the Alter Éco website—a week before the tournament began—”Pourquoi la France va gagner la Coupe du monde de football (ou presque).” The reason? Because France has a high level of taxation. N.B. the article, it is specified at the end, is “(relativement) sérieux.”
5th UPDATE: Political scientist and public intellectual Yascha Mounk has a typically thoughtful commentary (July 24th) in Slate, “Trevor Noah doesn’t get to decide who’s French.” The lede: “The Daily Show host says his critics in Europe missed the context of his World Cup commentary. But he’s making the same mistake.”
In his piece, Mounk links to one by The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik, dated July 16th, that I missed, “The French World Cup win and the glories of immigration.”
Massilian is red with confusion.
About the final somber quote from Bioy Casares, I wasn’t thinking about anyone here manipulating this specific French pride and joy, I was thinking about the ambivalent electric link between football passion and nationalism.
One beautiful image which moved me a lot this morning was that of Mbappé’s high-five with the Pussy Riot who invaded the field during the game before being expelled manu militari. He couldn’t have known she was a Pussy Riot, but the generosity of his youth dictated the gesture she expected when she ran towards him with her arms raised ! Great Mbappé! A high-five with the Pussy Riots in front of Putin at 19 during the world cup finale ! Save some for later, Kylian !
I feel a little bit lonely in the comment lounge…
I have read the contents of the various links. I listened to Trevor Noah.
In bulk my reactions:
What I think is most accurate is what Simon Kuper says about the younger generation.
I have the same feeling when I watch my 30-year-old son’s gang of friends.
Very diverse both in its origins and sociology.
They could perfectly echo Leela Jacinto’s “The identity business is so boring!”
Oh, yes, indeed it is !
Vox’s article seemed laborious and above all interminable.
Trevor Noah’s answer to the French ambassador: a long tunnel of clichés told with a certain bad faith.
So yes, there are obviously differences between the American or even Anglo-Saxon vision and the French concept of integration.
I thought we had already gone through all this about the veil several times…
I haven’t learn much.
“To the Jews as a nation, one must refuse everything; but to Jews as men one must grant everything … there cannot be a nation within the nation.”
Obviously, it seems to me… And I have no problem with that.
I am against individualism but for the construction of one’s unique individuation in all its fullness.
I do notice one thing though.
When Trevor Noah talks about Africa, he is not talking about any African country, he is only talking about color.
He’s not talking about people and ethnicities, he’s talking about “race”, he just means “black”.
A Peul = a Bantu = an Ashanti = a Yoruba = a Xhosas = a Pygmy, etc. They are all blacks, wtf !
“How are you my n****a !” as he arrogates himself the right to say, to whom he thinks it is cool to say. (N****a ! as it is hypocritically written in A*****a by omitting just enough letters to remain on the safe side!).
It probably works in Richard Pryor and Eddy Murphy’s world and country, maybe less well elsewhere.
Well, I’m not so sure Pogba and Mbappé are Noah’s n****as !
I think one can completely honor one’s “African part” and still gently answer “Fuck you brother, I am not your n****a !” to Trevor Howard the black-south African-American-humorist. I don’t see why he is so different than say Jim Jefferies.
The African part of the personality (I don’t want to write “identity”) of the black players in the French team seems to me very peaceful and without any conflict with their French nationality. Which doesn’t mean they don’t have opinions about French politics, racist attitudes etc.
I see them free and happy, proud to be French.
This does not seem to me so much the case with other French players, those often coming from Maghreb for instance and that I feel much more often tense, clutched and cluttered with an irreducible hodgepodge of identity “Islamic-anti-neocolonialist” resentment against France.
Zidane constituting a magnificent counter example.
Ok I’ll pull massilian out of the funk. I’ll not discuss the football obviously as he is from OM town and I am originally from PSG town – not proud of it though.
The whole discussion of Trevor would become somewhat more interesting if we remembered, applying Trevor’s own logic, that he is not American at all – he likely knows about as much as I do about the US – but is, you know, from that country that Mandela wanted to turn into a rainbow nation. France is a rainbow nation on paper just like South Africa is (fewer languages I’ll grant you) and certainly is more a rainbow nation in reality than South Africa is.
So this is not at all a case of Anglos trying to apply their set of values worldwide and the gauls resisting, but a case of a South African simply loosing his values to make a joke. The French ambassador was kind enough not to point that out.
And now an amusing fact: the little tuckshop across from where I lived for many years next to South Africa had a huge graffity painting: Zinedine Zidane. I feel pretty sure that a lot of tuckshops will be called Mbape or Pogba in the near future. That is the power of football.
Tuck shop: Didn’t know what that was (so had to look up), as I’ve never been to South Africa myself.
Kylian Mbappé is sure to be the most famous and beloved Frenchman in the coming decade at least.
I noted that Trevor Noah’s viral response to Ambassador Aruad was appreciated by all the Frenchmen/women on my social media newsfeeds who commented on it. Not to mention Americans, Brits, and others, of course.