In the past few days, French football has been paralysed by a severe and abject crisis. This has come as a shock to most French football fans who thought that things could hardly get worse than they did last summer when a players' mutiny and sheer bad attitude led to the team's elimination in the earliest stage of the World Cup. For many, this was not just a sporting humiliation but a national disgrace. For some fans, this was also an excuse for a sinister form of racism – they accused the non-white players in the team of playing for money and not the country.
This was a new low point for a nation which had built its most successful team ever – the World-Cup winning team of 1998 – on a wide and apparently harmonious ethnic mix. Since then, under the management of Laurent Blanc (who played in the '98 team), and in the wake of a few decent performances, the French team was supposed to be on the way back with the rancour of the World Cup just a bad memory. More...
This was a new low point for a nation which had built its most successful team ever – the World-Cup winning team of 1998 – on a wide and apparently harmonious ethnic mix. Since then, under the management of Laurent Blanc (who played in the '98 team), and in the wake of a few decent performances, the French team was supposed to be on the way back with the rancour of the World Cup just a bad memory. More...
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