The meltdown of France's World Cup team - both on and off the pitch - have shaken all walks of French society. The team has become a metaphor for everything seen as wrong in France today – politics, race, wealth, and too much individualism.
By Robert Marquand
It may be just sport. But recriminations here over the French soccer team meltdown – the losses, plus everything else – have begun in fury, and are spilling into politics, culture, and race divides.
Two weeks of rancor in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa by Les Bleus – and no goals scored – is being taken as a mirror on French society by philosophers and analysts: some call it a metaphor for President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling party ostentation, wealth, and individualism – others blame a new generation of “crude and vulgar” players from minority French suburbs.
France is sensitive about its world image in the best of times. But when its team self-destructs on the World Cup stage, when it ties Uruguay and loses to Mexico, when its star forward hurls epithets at the coach and is sent packing, when the team then goes on strike, when some players won’t dress to play against host South Africa today, when the team director resigns in tears, when the French public shouts “shame” in the streets and the sports minister is pushed to the cameras by President Sarkozy to call for team dignity, when the world press snickers, when bank Credit Agricole drops ad sponsorship, and the far right blames “blacks” and the far left blames “millionaire athletes” – it all amounts to a national crisis, a moment of bitter societal soul-searching.
Read more at http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0622/France-s-World-Cup-soccer-woes-rock-French-society
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