Backed by the ring road, the Parc des Princes will once again become a “blue house” for one evening, as between 1972 and 1997. On Saturday 13 November, the French football team can validate its ticket there, in the event of victory against Kazakhstan. for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Due to the works of the future Charles-de-Gaulle Express which make it difficult to serve Saint-Denis this weekend, the French Football Federation (FFF) has opted for a return to Paris. Event. This is only the third time since the “move” of the Blues to the Stade de France, in 1998.
On October 11, 2013, the players of Didier Deschamps inflict a tennis score on Australia (6-0) in a friendly. Asked before the match about his reunion with the enclosure of the 16e district, the coach then cools the atmosphere. “It’s a beautiful stadium, with a great atmosphere. But you can’t say that I have my best memories there… It’s even the worst of my career. ” A Bulgarian ghost walks through the press room at the Clairefontaine training center.
On November 17, 1993, the evening began, carefree, at hum America, by Joe Dassin, and ends in stupor after Emil Kostadinov’s goal on the gong. The Papin-Cantona generation missed its meeting with the United States and their World Cup the following year. Stunned, the public does not even whistle this team unable to take a point in two games against Israel, a month earlier (2-3), then against the Bulgarians (1-2) .
“We don’t do better in France”
“I remember the silence of a cathedral, as if no one realized what had just happened”, exhumes Philippe Tournon. The historic press attaché for the Blues (from 1983 to 2004, then from 2010 to 2018) had happier and noisier evenings in a stadium where he remembers having followed Francis Bouygues “On joists ten meters from the ground” when it was rebuilt in the early 1970s. But not right away. Still a journalist at The team, Mr. Tournon evokes matches with less than 10,000 spectatorss “and again, the federation invited quite a few schoolchildren”. The Blues are still in the middle of the desert and you have to have faith to encourage them.
Everything changes from 1976 with the two Michel. Hidalgo, the coach, and Platini, the scorer. Like the Nancy player, Maxime Bossis began his international career at the Parc on November 27, 1976, against Czechoslovakia, in a three-quarter empty stadium. But “the great Max” brings the love story back “With this victory against Bulgaria (3-1) the following year”, synonymous with qualification for the World Cup in Argentina. That evening, it rains in Paris and the defender carries in triumph, with his partners, a Michel Hidalgo bundled up in a blue windbreaker.
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