Certainly, it will be the highlight match of the season. A real encounter, this one, promising to be “sportive”, “high-level”. And not necessarily “friendly”. In the fall, a duel could oppose Nicolas Sarkozy to FIFA. In the aftermath of the media psychodrama and the impressive downfall of the French team, the President of the Republic announced the holding of the “General States of French Football”. The Minister of Health and Sports, Roselyne Bachelot, set the tone by denouncing the behavior of “immature leaders” within the team, deeming the departure of the president of the French Football Federation (FFF) Jean-Pierre Escalettes “inevitable”. “Unacceptable political interference” potentially leading to a “reaction from FIFA”, sharply retorted the Secretary-General of the International Football Federation, Jérôme Valcke, who claims the “autonomy of the sports movement”. A new opposition between politics and sports after the incident of the whistled Marseillaise at the Stade de France, a matter for which the Elysée unsuccessfully requested the interruption of the match as a form of sanction.
While they appear to clash, politics and football aim for the same goal: to capture the favor of public opinion. In the voting ballots for the former. In the Federal coffers for the latter. Public opinion to be taken into account if we believe Jean-Louis Valentin, former Director of the French Football Federation: “in football,” he explained, “you can’t go against public opinion”. “The divorce with the French began after the victory against Ireland: a match that should have been replayed.” An enlightening Ifop survey, conducted on June 24 and 25 and published by Sud-Ouest, confirms a moral, political, and national interpretation of the French team’s defeat: for 53% of those surveyed, “the way the French team behaved during the World Cup” is “more generally indicative of the dysfunctions and loss of values affecting French society as a whole”. This figure rises to 56% among those aged “35 and over”. According to Sud-Ouest, retirees (60%), employees (58%), right-wing sympathizers (57%) and those of the Modem (58%) see it more and mainly as an illustration of a deeper values crisis affecting the whole society.
In times of economic austerity, undoubtedly, it’s the theme of money that causes the most damage: primarily, the budget of 200 million euros managed by the Federation. An amount that would require real management, a “proactive and emblematic presidency” according to Jean-Louis Valentin, who criticizes the average age of the leaders. A well-known French ailment. Also in the crosshairs are the “fantastic cars of the French team” with a fascinating detailed review edited by Yahoo.auto: “Patrice Evra’s Ferrari 430 estimated at 172,000 euros… the very rare Ferrari Superamerica at 275,000 euros of Nicolas Anelka… a low-cost compared to William Gallas’s car, a Mercedes SLR costing 500,000 euros!”. One can understand the President’s anger against the French footballers. Without the political gain of a place of honor at the World Cup, they further irritate his presidential slogan: they earn enormously without working much!
Also accused is the excessive, if not pathological, individual “stardom” of the players who end up suffering from an astonishing narcissistic deficit: “Before they talked to me more, I was in the spotlight. When you no longer have credibility in a group, it becomes difficult. A man’s pride takes a hit,” Thierry Henry sadly admitted on the Grand Journal of Canal+. The reception at the Elysée now equates to a brief therapeutic session on the couch. Not to mention the communication and relationships with the press: the “culture of secrecy that is from another time”, according to Jean-Louis Valentin, harks back to political news where morality suddenly takes offense the day after publicity. Never the day before.
Projective, suffering identification of the French in the woes of football? Excessive transferential idealization on their part and on the world of football from disappointed expectations emanating from the political system? From the first match, the eighteen million spectators -and voters- perhaps thought they could escape the worries of daily life and the questioning it brings, dreaming all in blue: it is also, apparently, the color of opium’s smoke rings.
