Some commentators have discussed the 2018 success of Les Bleus as a return to the joys of "black, blanc, beur" multicultural national celebration, acceptance and celebration of ethnic diversity.
Fifa
World Cup 2018 : The French football team has won the 2018 World
Cup, 20 years after it triumphed on home soil in 1998. “Les Bleus”,
as they’re called, are back in the nation’s good books,
celebrated for their excellent performance in this year’s
tournament, right through the 4-2 win over Croatia in the final. Out
of the limelight and the glare of success in Russia 2018, however, a
question continues to dog French football – the role of race and
class in the selection of national players.
On
the surface, this may seem strange with the attention given to the
multicultural harmony of the 1998 World Cup-winning team. The
straight-talking former captain of the French national team, Zinedine
Zidane, recently said of his country’s 1998 win: "It was not
about religion, the colour of your skin, we didn’t care about that,
we were just together and enjoyed the moment."
This
echoed the sentiment of the times, that a multicultural team of
united “black, blanc, beur” (black, white or Arab) players had
united under the cause of the French national team to lift the World
Cup for the first time. Triumph, on the football field, demonstrated
that integration had been successful in France
and anyone could reach the top of French society.
Zidane,
the star of France’s 1998 World Cup-winning team, was born to
Berber Algerian parents. He grew up in Marseille’s infamous “La
Castellane” estate, seen as one of the toughest estates in one of
France’s toughest cities. Two decades later, Kylian Mbappé – a
19-year-old of Cameroonian and Algerian heritage – who grew up in
the Bondy suburbs of Paris, is the star of the French team.
Some
commentators have discussed the 2018 success of Les Bleus as a return
to the joys of “black, blanc, beur” multicultural national
celebration, acceptance and celebration of ethnic diversity. Yet
others have been critical of the way politics, integration and
football have been mixed together again.
