Euro 2016: Despite the fear factor, France determined to have a party

There are acute worries over terrorism but the French hope multi-cultural team can unite a nation

Can Paul Pogba and his French team unite a nation? (Getty)

Eighteen years ago, an opportunistic airline strike threatened to disrupt an international show-piece which was supposed to present France’s best qualities to the world.

Eighteen years ago, the manager of the France team was mocked and belittled for excluding some of his most talented player from a French-hosted World Cup.

As Friday's kick-off of Euro 2016 approaches, France faces strikes by rail workers, rubbish collectors and Air France pilots.

Didier Deschamps, the manager of the host team, has been accused (absurdly) of being a racist for leaving out two of France’s most talented footballers.

Déjà vu all over agan?

In two important respects, Euro 2016 is quite different from the World Cup in 1998.

Eighteen years ago, there was no particular terrorist threat. The tournament which starts in St Denis north of Paris on Friday and continues in nine other French towns, will have the most intensive and intrusive security of any event in sporting history.

Seven months after the multi-pronged jihadist assault in the Paris area which killed 130 people, the fear of a terrorist attack remains acute. There will be 90,000 police and soldiers on duty plus 15,000 private security guards.

“Even 100 per cent precaution cannot mean zero per cent risk,” said the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve.

And yet despite everything – despite floods, strikes, selection controversies and the well-founded fear of terrorism – France is approaching Euro 2016 in a mood of anxious expectation. “Can we finally have a bit of fun?” asked a front-page headline in Le Parisien on Monday.

This is the second great difference from 1998. Eighteen years ago, the France squad triumphed in its domestic World Cup against all the confidently gloomy predictions of the massed ranks of French football punditry.

The 2016 France squad – boosted by a transfusion of late-emerging talent from the English Premier League - has won cautious admiration of the country’s football writers and captured the hearts of most French football fans.

The exception are the football-mad kids of North African extraction in the troubled multi-racial suburbs of French cities. They take seriously the controversy over the allegedly “racist” non-selection of “their” star players, Karim Benzema and Hatem Ben Arfa.

Encouraged by incendiary remarks by Eric Cantona and by Benzema himself, they are convinced that “beur” (Arab) players are paying the price for anti-muslim feelings stoked by the jihadist attacks last year.

Amar, a youth worker in the Paris suburbs, who is of Algerian origin, told The Independent: “These kids are football crazy. Usually, they have a split allegiance between France and the country of their family’s origin. Now they are telling me that they want France to lose. If the team starts winning that might easily change.”

Black kids in the banlieues (although often also muslim) take a different view. In the final France squad of 23, there are 10 players of African and Caribbean origin, one “beur”, Adil Rami, and one player, Dimitri Payet from the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean.

A racist selection?

“With Pogba, Martial, Coman and Kanté, the black kids easily identify with this team,” Amar said. “They think Deschamps was right to keep Benzema out.”

(The Real Madrid striker faces a possible criminal prosecution for allegedly helping childhood friends to blackmail a France team-mate over a sex-tape. He denies the allegations.)

In a sense, all these discussions are depressingly racist – or racially defined. The victory of the multi-racial 1998 team – with Deschamps as captain – was hailed at the time as the symbol of the emergence of a race-blind “black, white and brown” France.

Three years later the far right leader of the Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round of a French presidential election. Six years ago, at the South African World Cup, right-wing French politicians took malicious delight in blaming black players for the collapse of discipline which culminated in the whole squad refusing to leave the team bus.

Before the Cantona and Benzema allegetions, Deschamps’ young squad had gone some way towards redeeming the reputation of the national team. The chief organiser of Euro 2016, Jacques Lambert, believes that the country – after seven depressing months – is desperate for a joyful release of tension in the next month.

“Deschamps’ team has already created a real support base,” he said yesterday. “There is no reason why that should change. If the results are good, expectations and enthusiasm will mount. In 1998, people were indifferent, even hostile, to the France team at the start of the tournament,”

Perhaps, the lack of expectation explained the unexpected success of the Zidane-Desailly-Blanc-Thuram generation. The Pogba-Griezmann-Kanté-Martial-Payet generation does not have that advantage.

They will have the raucous support of French fans from the kick off against Romania at the Stade de France on Friday night.

There has been massive demand for tickets for France games – although less interest than expected from French fans for the non-France games. Over 2,500,000 tickets for Euro 2016 matches have been sold. The organisers expected the majority to go to “home” fans. In fact 60 per cent have gone abroad and only 40 per cent to France.

All the same, a terrorist-bruised, strike-battered and rain-sodden France is desperate for a party over the next month. If Les Bleus do well, perhaps even the “beur” kids from the suburbs will join the celebrations as they did in 1998.

It would be too much, however, to expect them to leave their Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian flags at home.