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Special Report
An International Disgrace
How French soccer became a laughingstock.
As French humiliations go, and there have been many, crashing out of the Soccer World Cup competition in South Africa on Tuesday was the worst in recent memory. It hit the French hard in what’s left of their national pride and they may need years to earn it back.
France’s defeat in the opening round of the World Cup followed a weekend of antics never before witnessed at this level of international competition, leaving fans wondering until game time Tuesday whether their squabbling team would even come out of the dressing room to face South Africa. Backbiting and mutiny had got well out of hand, with the players disavowing their coach and accusing each other of lacking talent.
Their loss (2-1) was a foregone conclusion. South Africa ran circles around them, leaving them last in their group and eliminated from the competition.
The team began to fall apart at halftime Friday when striker Nicolas Anelka insulted Coach Raymond Domenech in the privacy of the dressing room. His words, roughly translated into English, were “Go f*** yourself, you dirty SOB !” In French, this is such strong language that television commentators would not actually repeat it. A few did however hold up to camera the front page of l’Equipe, the French sports daily, which splashed the insult (with no abbreviations or asterisks) on page one Saturday morning.
What happens in the dressing room is supposed to stay in the dressing room but someone, yet to be identified, shared the incident with the correspondent of l’Equipe. Domenech went ballistic when he learned of the publication and, in agreement with the French Football Federation, decided to sack Anelka and send him back to London, where he is a star player for Chelsea.
Now it was the team’s turn to go ballistic. Recriminations and threats flew in the hotel on Saturday, punctuated with a botched press conference at which participants contradicted each other on the sequence of events and on the basic question of whether Anelka’s dismissal was justified. The team thought not. The Federation thought otherwise.
One journalist on the scene called the performance “un cauchemar,” a nightmare, for the poor preparation and failure to agree on how to present the affair to the public.
The French team has been known to be under strain for the past four years, with cliques at war with each other and Domenech disliked by just about everyone. He has been reported to make his lineup selections based in part on compatible star signs. His communications skills with his players, the press and the public are severely limited. It was already decided that he would be replaced after this World Cup.
THE CRISIS BECAME AN AFFAIR OF STATE when President Nicolas Sarkozy, co-chairing a St. Petersburg press conference with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, said in answer to a French journalist’s question that Anelka’s comments were “inacceptable, inacceptable.” Medvedev looked uncomfortable as the questioning veered away from the carefully prepared French-Russian friendship message.
Back in South Africa, the drama continued to unfold. The final French practice was suddenly canceled on Sunday just as it was about to get under way. Television cameras caught long shots of Domenech, team captain Patrice Evra, and other staff shouting and pushing each other around on the field. No blows were actually landed.
By now the French public was aghast that their team, world champions in 1998, had collapsed in disarray so publicly. Sunday TV commentators, sportswriters and some of my personal friends erupted with comments such as “pathetic,” “a national disgrace,” “spoiled children,” “cry-babies” and, as one national newspaper put it, “We are now the laughingstock of the entire world.”
The climax of Sunday’s episode ended when the players climbed back in their bus but refused to allow Coach Domenech aboard. The bus pulled away and Domenech hitched a ride with South Africa security men. A full-blown mutiny was now under way.
On Monday the team members remained holed up in their hotel room until flying off to Bloemfontein for their final match. Some players refused to play, leaving Domenech with a hodgepodge of second-stringers trying to get to know each other in real time.
It takes no great effort to project the short-tempered French team’s behavior onto France today as a nation, where nerves are frayed in the present weak economy. France likes to think of itself as a combative culture, but the current level of anger and resentment is well above normal.
The rest of Europe is also tightening its belt to reduce deficits and save the euro, but only the French are so belligerent over planned cutbacks in the welfare state, including raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. Sarkozy has been forced to work linguistic miracles to avoid saying “rigeur,” a scare word to French trade unions.
Just as its soccer players are considered grossly overpaid, French workers enjoy comfortable protections — but now from an impoverished state treasury. Both resent any attempt to rein them in.
As my neighbor summed it up, “France has not worked well since military conscription was given up in the 1990s. Our young men do not know the meaning of discipline. You see this everywhere, in the workplace and on the soccer field.”
Letter to the Editor View all comments (69) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 6.23.10 @ 6:49AM
The French have always behaved that way toward people from other countries. Its funny to see them behaving that way toward one another, and I hope some of them learn a lesson from this Showing Scorn Its Own Image display.
In 2004 we were covering Le Mans and someone from one of the teams came up and asked to borrow our Quebecois photographer -- they were trying to deal with France Telecom and same had become smilingly deaf when discovering they were dealing with Anglos. (It took our photographer mere minutes to sort out the difficulty.)
Sauce for the goose, guys, is sauce for the gander. Adieu les bleu!
Alan Brooks| 6.23.10 @ 7:52PM
The French will have the best team someday-- they proved in 1940 that they can run as fast as anyone, anywhere.
Joanne Kloosterhof| 6.24.10 @ 1:17AM
Priceless comment and so true!!!!
Occam's Tool| 6.24.10 @ 7:11PM
What a slander to our allies, Alan. The French would hold in place in 1940 for two or three minutes at a time.
Kitty| 6.23.10 @ 7:32AM
Here's that front page (with translation in the text):
http://www.vanityfair.com/onli.....d-cup.html
Rush| 6.23.10 @ 11:19AM
I have it on good authority that the literal translation was actually, "Rub mayonnaise in your beard, you half-nibbled morsel of warm truffled cucumber!"
Michael L. Hauschild| 6.23.10 @ 7:36AM
Don’t be too hard on the French. My father who spent some time in France had a certain begrudging fondness for them due to his personal experience at the end of WWII. He had frozen all the skin off his lower legs in the Bulge and his recovery time was spent getting equipment processed and ready for the looming invasion of Japan. (Thank you Harry, for thwarting that bloodbath.) The French during that period exhibited excellent political judgment, military decorum and chivalry. Daily, as the collaborators were identified and rounded up, they were marched in formation out to the cemetery carrying shovels where later there would resonate the sound of gunfire. The guards would come back pulling a horse cart (sans horse, they had eaten the horses) loaded the shovels with their rifles over their shoulders. While on the way to the cemetery the leaders of the collaborators were hung from the lamp posts as decorations on the parade route. Dad laughed about this with his famous quote, “You know if you hang a frog long enough their neck actually stretches.” The female collaborators were simply shaven bald; I assume their term of punishment was just the time it took for their hair to grow back.
There is a lesson in this tale; I hope the Old Texican owns a cart, and that this does not get bad enough that we have to eat the horses.
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.23.10 @ 9:27AM
Michael,
(smile) OKOK, but I don't quite yet get the lesson.
Please put me in remedial class and hep me.
Michael L. Hauschild| 6.23.10 @ 12:39PM
Ken.
Maybe this clarification will help.
That cart (we will buy you one, need be) was utilized both directions in the procession to the grave site ceremonial firing squad. As the cemetery brigade came abreast of one of the lamp posts where a previous collaborator’s head had finally separated, the craniums were policed up by the shovel bearers along with the torsos, loaded on the cart and on the spot the most prominent offender within the ranks of the collaborations brigade was selected as a replacement decoration.
Louis Jenkins| 6.23.10 @ 8:09AM
The French, they have so badly degenerated into squabbling with themselves. The bottom of the pile.
JimH| 6.23.10 @ 8:54AM
One day a book review about Dien Bien Phu and now this. Is this part of some secret right wing anti-French agenda? heh heh
Eric Cartman| 6.23.10 @ 8:55AM
The French soccer team? What's soccer?
Christopher Holland| 6.23.10 @ 9:33PM
The French? Is that a fancy new name for cheese eating surrender monkey?
NavyBrat | 6.23.10 @ 8:59AM
How typically French. When the going gets tough, the French quit & self destruct. Its a law as sure as the law of gravity. What's sad is that this attitude has crept into their soccer, which is one of the few things they're good at (they know food pretty well). Is it any wonder that the baddest ass unit in the French army has always been comprised of foreigners?
Appleby| 6.24.10 @ 7:00AM
We Audi fans enjoyed watching the (French) Peugeot team, which was much faster, overdrive their cars until three of them exploded and one was ruined by a driver who brought it back to the pits too fast after a tire went down, and dragged the front of the car to destruction.
Meanwhile the Audi team simply kept up with them and gradually assumed the lead, winning 1-2-3 as all their cars finished on the podium.
Adieu les bleu!
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.23.10 @ 9:29AM
Folks,
There is a hilarious column over at American Thinker about soccer.
...The Perfect Socialist Sport.
Sam| 6.23.10 @ 9:36PM
Yet AmSpec thought it important enough to feature in two articles in it's weekly archives. It's okay if you don't understand it- most Americans don't.
Occam's Tool| 6.24.10 @ 7:15PM
It's interesting that Alan Brooks and Appleby, with whom I have disagreed with on more than one occasion, share my dislike of the French.
Some things just unite all Americans, I guess.
L. Ross| 6.23.10 @ 9:42AM
We should be careful about the scorn we heap upon the French. California is almost exactly like them, in work ethic, finances, maturity, and temprement.
Cabermon| 6.23.10 @ 10:48AM
* This confirms that when the Germans invented "Schadenfreude" they had the French in mind.
* How can you surrender in a game played with your hands already up?
* California is indeed our France. Great food, resources, and climate, but populated and run by the indolent.
Christopher Holland| 6.23.10 @ 9:35PM
At least California never surrender to a nation of pastry cooks and beer garden waiters. Be thankful for small mercies.
breffnian| 6.23.10 @ 9:54AM
Not sure if you guys know this (or care) but the French only got to the finals through a clear handball goal in a playoff against Ireland. FIFA refused to cancel the goal; kind of like the US 3rd goal against Slovenia in reverse. Deep down the French knew they didn't even deserve to be there and as a result they self destructed.
Doctor Right| 6.23.10 @ 9:56AM
I dated a French girl in the early 90's. She was very cute, fun, liked good wine and cheese, had some definite talents, but was otherwise a frivolous individual without any serious goals who just wandered through life...
She was simply TOO French for me.
There's a lesson in there somewhere. Feel free to tell me what it is.
aquanomics| 6.23.10 @ 10:14AM
....she thought you were a jerk?
Doctor Right| 6.23.10 @ 4:21PM
Possibly.
Or maybe it was my bad habit of coughing out-loud every time she lit up a cigarette which was, like, every 10 minutes...
...Still, she had a certain "Je ne sais quois", I suppose. Like I said, she was good at a few things...She was French, after all.
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.23.10 @ 10:24AM
Doctor,
One lesson... check the lady's armpits before getting involved.
Find a "tomboy" girl. They are ever so much more fun 0n a fishing trip.
Doctor Right| 6.23.10 @ 4:23PM
It's funny you should say that Ken, because THAT reminds me of German girl I dated in '93.
She had intense blue eyes...She was slender, athletic, tanned, and blonde...ALL OVER.
And to be honest, it didn't really bother me.
Christopher Holland| 6.23.10 @ 9:37PM
Maybe it was the cheese. de Gaul said that a nation with 240 different types of cheese was impossible to organise.
JmsA| 6.23.10 @ 10:37AM
Who cares about the French, they're done. The Americans just got jobbed again by the referee against Algeria, a clearly inferior team.
Wilhelm Stanislav| 6.23.10 @ 10:54AM
Type "french military victories" into Google (without the quotes) and then click on the first result that comes up.
Steve A| 6.23.10 @ 11:53AM
Wilhelm,
You rock! That is funny!
breffnian| 6.23.10 @ 12:32PM
Hold on. The French dominated Europe under Napoleon with a string of victories over every other European power and occupied Moscow. They lost 2 million killed in WW1 and although the Germans overran France in 1940, the French Army lost nearly 100,000 dead i.e. they stood and fought but were out-generaled. They fought in Indochina for 9 years before defeat.
JimH| 6.23.10 @ 1:01PM
Individual French soldiers are quite brave. Their leadership has been horrible. Napoleon was not French
Christopher Holland| 6.23.10 @ 9:40PM
The idea of wars and battles is to win them. Coming second gets you nothing. If the French had understood this simple point, maybe people would not be writing so many jokes about them.
JmsA| 6.23.10 @ 11:49AM
The USA just scored and will advance to the next round. GO USA!!!!!!!!
breffnian| 6.23.10 @ 12:24PM
"We embody what Americans are all about. We can moan about or we can keep going. We're alive baby."
That was Landon Donovan after scoring a 92nd minute goal for the US against Algeria. The US tops the group. The contrast with France's overpaid superstars could not be greater. It's all about character. Support the team. They are representing us and doing a hell of a job.
JmsA| 6.23.10 @ 12:35PM
breffnian,
Well said. This American team, greatly personifying never say die, overcame adversity, including maliciously biased officiating, and done this country proud.
Steve A| 6.23.10 @ 11:50AM
I had to quit reading this article when it included both the words "French" & "soccer" in the first sentence, although actually only one of the 2 would have been enough for me to pack it in.
Ned| 6.23.10 @ 12:01PM
So, the French actually think that some dumba$$ soccer game could actually make them MORE of a laughingstock? I'm having a tough time imagining how that could even be possible.
Regards French women: last time I was there was in the late 80's... saw a lovely lady walking toward me on the sidewalk, wearing black inticately patterned stockings... oh, wait... that's not a pattern in the stockings, that's UNDER the stockings... what followed along as she passed can only be described as an 'odor'...
J.C.Eaton| 6.23.10 @ 12:15PM
This IS hilarious, but it's France. WGAS?
Cal| 6.23.10 @ 12:42PM
Don't paint all Californians with the same brush. Like everywhere else it is the leftist and those who mindlessly vote for them that have ruin this state.
There are plenty of hard working folks here, but it seems we are out numbered. Maybe some of the idiots will wake up and help change it back, but don't hold thy proverbial breath. To be compared to the French is the ultimate insult.
After all it was tthe nation that elected the obamanation and it is the nation that is suffering.
AMENBRO| 6.23.10 @ 1:28PM
You have my agreement & sympathy sir.
However, my brother married & lived in California. It took quite a while to beat the CA crap outta her. Realization of exactly how bass ackwards her childhood rearing had remanded her to raising kids didn't become apparent till their kids young adulthood.
Everytime we visited my son got the only asskickins of hi life there while acting out with those yongsters. Horrified my SIS-in-Law always asked me if I learned that childrearing trait as a manager at work.
She gets it know.
JmsA| 6.23.10 @ 2:04PM
I guess some of these folks claiming all Californians are leftist libtards haven't heard about Orange County, the largest Republican county in the country.
Occam's Tool| 6.24.10 @ 7:19PM
Orange County is outnumbered by the Marching Morons to the North.
Fred| 6.23.10 @ 8:22PM
I was born in Colorado, spent my summers in Colorado, and have always considered myself
a Coloradan. Unfortunately the bas****s are now
moving to the Denver area an destroying that state
also. If it hadn't been for my elderly parents and sisters I wouldn't have stayed here. Now that my
parents are gone and I am retired I am thinking of
becoming a Texan!
JmsA| 6.23.10 @ 12:51PM
Thank you, Cal, I couldn't have said better myself.
JmsA| 6.23.10 @ 12:55PM
Oops: I meant to write, I couldn't have said it better myself.
Sam| 6.23.10 @ 3:10PM
They play games the same way they fight wars. Losers.
McCoy| 6.23.10 @ 4:00PM
This is what happens when you allow muslim negroes to overrun your country.
Taxpayer| 6.23.10 @ 4:31PM
Still trying to figure out why I should be interested in or care about soccer, other than when my kid plays it.
JmsA| 6.23.10 @ 5:33PM
Taxpayer,
Sounds like your kids are onto something, and probably very happy and proud that their country's team is doing well.
txn4ever| 6.23.10 @ 4:58PM
"We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it." Marge Simpson
"As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure" Jacques Chirac, President of France
"As far as France is concerned, you're right." Rush Limbaugh,
MacDaddy| 6.23.10 @ 5:51PM
They DO have a half-decent salad dressing. Why they need 104 kinds of stinky cheese puzzles me....the swiss get by with one. But champagne kicks A$$!....so, on the whole, while the country and many of the people are pretty lame, as well as fun to kick around comedically when they are down, it isn't a complete waste of time. They also have that fancy Louver museum....
Ray| 6.23.10 @ 10:53PM
These people were taking the World Cup WAY to seriously! It's a sport, people, nothing more and nothing less. It has no more importance in actual life as wining or losing your company's softball tournament.
After all, this was a French soccer teea, not one of Saddam's Olympic teams! I mean, really, what happens of you lose? Are the french team members taken out and tortured? No, this was just people whining over the possibility losing their "pride." But how much "pride" do they display when they revert to the antics of angry, spoiled children in response to their own poor performance? No pride whatsoever. So, how's that "pride" thing working out for you guys?
Soccer SuxBawlz| 6.23.10 @ 11:29PM
"FRENCH" soccer is a "laughingstock" ??? SOCCER, is the laughingstock... Squirrels RUNNING AROUND WILD-EYED simply because they kicked a ball past another WILD-EYED NUTBAG... all wearing EAR PLUGS to prevent aural damage from the vuvuzela horns, bought with money that SHOULD have been used for FOOD in their third-world skit-hole ( rhymes with ) hog wallow. NO BRAINS, NO BIRTH CONTROL, NO JOBS, NO MONEY, NO SHAME... ( they would make EXCELLENT democrats in Oakland... )
Appleby| 6.24.10 @ 7:07AM
Why do people come on soccer threads to whine that they hate soccer?
We who hate baseball or pro football do not clutter up your threads with whining comments that your sports are boring, repetitive and staffed by known felons, many of them on parole. Think about it.
Wilfred| 6.24.10 @ 12:03AM
What's the big deal? This is only soccer.
It's not like it's baseball or football something really important .
peterike| 6.24.10 @ 12:34PM
The French team playing South Africa was actually more like North Africa playing South Africa. What on earth is "French" about the French soccer team? It's almost entirely black dudes and Arabs, few if any of whom have any historical ties to France.
So you take people from who knows how many countries, stick them onto a team and label it "France," and you wonder why they can't work well together? Why on earth would they? There is nothing uniting them.
whitepig| 6.25.10 @ 3:20PM
The black can play better than whites and you are jealous.your views are mere bigotry that only a mind of klu Klux Klan Klan can beget.Asshole you pig of a creature.
Mike| 6.24.10 @ 1:18PM
The French public seemed to take umbrage at the fact that "their" team didn't look very French.
Chantal | 6.24.10 @ 1:22PM
I wouldn't be trowing stones from glass houses, Mr. ex-patriot American living in Bordeaux.
The U.S. just had a General (Petraeus) who swooned during a Congressional hearing. And another General (McCrystal) was just sacked for his backstabbing snipes at the U.S. president in Rolling Stone -- among other improprieties.
Besides, petty public squabbles, politics and economic debacles pale, in light of the "international disgrace" which are the Iraq and Afghan preemptive wars being conducted by the U.S., which have seen thousands of innocents killed -- the carnage and destruction are barbaric, uncivilized and evidently (given Afghan's riches) motivated by a combo of greed and vindictiveness.
If this French soccer drama is your idea of the "worse French humiliation in recent memory," then you are the grand master of hyperbole.
I would have chosen the humiliating and spectacular defeat handed to the French colonial masters by the formerly enslaved Africans of Ayiti in 1804.
L'union fait la force!
Occam's Tool| 6.24.10 @ 7:27PM
Chantal:
The French bite over and over again. I don't regret the USA killing that mass-murdering scumbag Saddam or destroying the female mutilating and beheading Taliban.
What's funny is that the USA advanced, and we don't give two squirts about soccer.
Frog In Uniform| 6.27.10 @ 9:44AM
(quote) "Hold on. The French dominated Europe under Napoleon with a string of victories over every other European power and occupied Moscow. They lost 2 million killed in WW1 and although the Germans overran France in 1940, the French Army lost nearly 100,000 dead i.e. they stood and fought but were out-generaled. They fought in Indochina for 9 years before defeat. "
Right on! and let's not forget how the Brits betrayed us in Dunkirk and Mers El Kebir in 1940...
Do not underestimate our soldiers. You may spit on our politicians as you want because they deserve it, always did and always will. As a Frog in fatigues, working hard and training hard, believing in courage, dignity, honor and discipline, I do not feel at all represented by a bunch of rude muslims claiming to be l'Equipe de France whereas they carefully avoid to sing the French anthem, harass their very few christian team mates and give the world a very accurate picture of what my country has become after roughly 60 years of gaullo-socialism: a dump where the real french feels betrayed and estranged in their own nation. Do not be too hard with our ladies, airheads are to be found everywhere worldwide... Do not judge our personal hygiene after what it was in the late forties and early fifties, soap, razor blades, plumbing were a luxury just like they were in Berlin or Hamburg during the same years. So the question was: why do we lose wars? Because we have terrible politicians, therefore we have terrible generals. How come we end up with terrible politicians? Because any gifted, talented, honest french would rather do something interesting and fulfilling with his life than sitting in an office, taking bribes, buying votes and influence, telling one thing while thinking just the opposite. Great guys study hard, achieve a lot, become doctors, engineers or... military officers. Others, with less principles, become lawyers, government clerks, journalists and, having more time on their hands, happen to get elected (of course, it couldn't happen in the USA). Why do they put inept generals in charge? Because of Indochina and particularly Algeria. Half of a dozen generals, outraged by the way De Gaulle betrayed the Nation, decided to start a mutiny and founded a underground resistance army, the OAS. De Gaulle dissolved the paratroopers regiments that were involved in the rebellion (including the glorious Foreign Legion 1st REP), got many people shot and the rest in jail. We got dumb, career oriented pencil pushers ever since, as you'll never see any brave, brilliant and charismatic commander or colonel become a general, he would become a real danger for the parasites in charge, the ones who sold our Nation to Islam and the IMF. Pray for us before hating us.
RedneckWhiteskinBlucollar| 6.28.10 @ 12:31AM
Amen, Frog.
But when will France, and the rest of Europe, discover that socialism doesn't work? And when will they discover that nations have a right to a cultural identity? Islam is violent, racist, and seditious. Wake up Europe!