VSIt is certainly only a football story, but it says a little about our common history. Journalist at France Télévisions, Mohamed Bouhafsi understood that the French feed on two great popular passions: football and politics. He saw what there was in common, in our collective imagination, between Charles de Gaulle and Michel Platini, between Jacques Chirac and Didier Deschamps, between Nicolas Sarkozy and Franck Ribéry, between François Hollande and Hugo Lloris, between Emmanuel Macron and Kylian Mbappe…
All say an era, a style, a direct link with the French. They awaken nostalgia, evoke jubilation and drama. It’s only football, but we talk about it as great battles inscribed in an already ancient chronology. 1998 is Austerlitz! 2018, Verdun! Chills run through the back. The memory of France-Germany in Seville draws tears, like the more tragic one of November 13, 2015, when two suicide bombers detonated their bombs on the forecourt of the Stade de France, while France faced Germany.
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Chirac to Jacquet: “I give you this decoration… And dead to idiots! »
In the remarkable documentary The Blues and the Elysée, broadcast on Sunday evening on France 5, all these events are told to us by actors and experts in sport and politics. Himself a great fan of football and politics, Mohamed Bouhafsi solicited the memory of Emmanuel Macron, François Hollande, Michel Platini, Jacques Vendroux, Michel Drucker, Olivier Giroud, Lilian Thuram… And a breathless document emerges, where the perks of sport are sometimes worth more than what is played out on the field.
Jacques Chirac is no longer there to remember that other celebration of the federation that was the victory of the 1998 World Cup. Shortly before the start of the competition, the president saw in the skepticism of the media elites vis-à-vis Lives of coach Aimé Jacquet the same as in 1995, when he set out to conquer the Élysée against Édouard Balladur. At the time of pinning him the Legion of Honor after the victory of the Blues, Chirac therefore whispered in Jacquet’s ear: “I give you this decoration… And dead to idiots! »
Three years later, in 2001, the myth of France “black-white-beur” evaporated brutally after supporters of Algeria, mainly French, whistled the Marseillaise at the Stade de France, before invade the field. Former Minister of Sports, the communist Marie-Georges Buffet denounces the “mirage” of an egalitarian France: “In the application of rights, this France was not. Collaborator of Lionel Jospin at Matignon, Manuel Valls regrets that the Prime Minister did not leave the stand of the Stade de France at this moment. Lilian Thuram says he stayed on the lawn to lecture the young supporters: “You are shooting yourself in the foot! »
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“Euro 2016 allowed the victory of 2018”, smiles Hollande
Then there were the Sarkozy years, the least rosy for the Blues, in particular because of the famous players’ strike in South Africa. Passionate about football, Sarkozy politicizes things, sees in this team a “band of immature bosses”, as his minister Roselyne Bachelot will say. Not resentful, the president offers Lilian Thuram, who opposed him after the “Kärcher” affair, to be his minister in charge of diversity. “I disagreed with him precisely on this subject,” says Thuram.
Finally, we observe from a distance the little rivalry between Hollande and Macron. The former had a Euro final in 2016; the other a crowning of world champion, two years later. “A president always works for his successor. Euro 2016 allowed the victory of 2018, ”smiles Hollande. ” It’s true ! replied Macron. We always build on what has been done before us. And 2016 [il était ministre de l’Économie de Hollande, NDLR] prepared 2018 in football but also in many things of economic life…”
The Blues and the Elyséefilm by Mohamed Bouhafsi, Sunday November 20 at 8:55 p.m. on France 5.