Defeated (2-0) in the first leg, the French team qualified for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil by beating Ukraine 3-0 in the second leg on Tuesday at the Stade de France, thus avoiding becoming the first French team to miss a World Cup since 1994.
Yes, we must indeed distinguish between things and not confuse a sports team, as popular as it may be, with the 65 million French people who wake up every morning, but the question is: Why shouldn’t we be happy about this victory? Especially when it was achieved with flair and this time without a goal scored with a handball.
But there is always someone for whom every occasion is a good opportunity to get noticed and make a name for themselves.
Lionnel Luca, deputy (UMP) for Alpes-Maritimes, questions the sincerity of the result of the match between France and Ukraine, highlighting that the presence of the French team at the 2014 World Cup served the interests of both the French and international federations, thus casting the suspicion of a fixed match.
“1 offside goal, 1 own goal, 1 player sent off and that’s how you save the TV rights of the FFF and the Francophone stakes for Fifa,” Mr. Luca wrote on Twitter after the French victory, marked by the exclusion of a Ukrainian player early in the second half.
The deputy from Alpes-Maritimes is no stranger to this kind of “exploit”. In the past, he had already made a name for himself by making racially tinged remarks at an electoral meeting.
This time, he chose anti-patriotism to go against the grain: While, for once, the French team gained unanimous support, here is Lionel Luca (in a low-grade Sherlock Holmes version) airing his doubts about the regularity of the match while there was undoubtedly an easier and much more real argument for his intellectual exploits: The few mixed-race, black, Arab, and even Muslim players who wore the rooster-emblazoned jersey, all people who are not really in the deputy’s favor.
Pegged by supporters who revolted against such brazenness and audacity, the deputy from the Azure Coast, clearly in a provocative mood, doubled down on his remarks.
To stay in this allusive language, one could tell him that the horse and the donkey (like the zebra) belong to the same family of equids but to two different species: Where then do we place our Sunday detective?
