2018 World Cup: A Brief History of French Soccer

The lasting image from France’s last trip to the World Cup final is not of a goal, or a save, or any other act of footballing brilliance. It’s of a man pulling the tape from his right wrist as he walks past the trophy, not once making eye contact, before slowly descending into the locker room, never to return again.

It’s been 12 years since Zinedine Zidane retired. With him went the next decade of French success. Each international tournament Les Bleus entered in that time started with high hopes, and ended with disaster — a far cry from the exceptional record they experienced with Zizou at the helm. Win or lose, the 2006 World Cup final was to be the legend’s finale. He was, by all accounts, the best athlete in the history of France, and quite possibly the greatest midfielder to ever live. Ask any five fans to tell you what they posit is his peak international performance, and you’ll likely get as many different responses: his title-winning performance against Brazil in the 1998 World Cup final; his deconstruction of Portugal in the Euro 2000 semifinal; his utter destruction of England in the 2004 edition, when he sent two stoppage-time goals past David James; his dissection of Spain in the 2006 World Cup round of 16; or four days later, when Zidane put forth one of the best individual performances the global game has ever seen.

For 90 minutes — just as he had eight years prior — Zidane toyed with the Brazilians, deftly pirouetting between collapsing defenders and placing inch-perfect passes. Once, he took a pass from a teammate, and with Ronaldo — still one of the most feared forwards in the world — crashing in, lifted the ball up over his Madrid teammate, and caressed it, with his head, toward Éric Abidal.

“Effortless brilliance,” emoted commentator Clive Tyldesley. “He just seems so relaxed when the ball comes to him.”

He was the maestro, the orchestra, the artist, and the song. Later, long after Zidane’s free kick landed on Thierry Henry’s boot to set up the game’s only goal, Tyldesley made a final request to the man he called the finest player he’d ever seen in the modern era.

“Please don’t give up the game.”

Zidane was many things all at once: The heir to a footballing lineage that featured French soccer greats Michel Platini and Just Fontaine. The ill-tempered maestro who cost himself and his country dearly. The most skilled technician ever to grace a blue shirt. The steward of Les Bleus’ rise and the fuse that set off its downfall. The symbol of common bond in a country fractured by racism and nationalism. The object of hatred from the same devotees who once chanted his name. A Frenchman, a Muslim, and an Arab.

On Sunday, France will return to the World Cup final for the first time since Zidane struck Marco Materazzi, sending his career out simultaneously with a bang and a whimper. This summer’s iteration of Les Bleus hearken back to their forerunners from 20 years ago. There’s Kylian Mbappé, the speedy, clinical finisher, just 19; Paul Pogba, the superstar central midfielder, directing traffic and feeding his teammates; N’Golo Kanté, the best defensive midfielder in the world; and a host of others, like Antoine Griezmann, Olivier Giroud, Raphaël Varane, and Hugo Lloris, who remind of stars like Robert Pirès, Thierry Henry, Emmanuel Petit, Claude Makélélé, Lilian Thuram, and Fabien Barthez. Their current manager, Didier Deschamps, started the final against Brazil in midfield.

The new generation of French heroes has done well emulating their elders. After dispatching Australia and Peru and drawing Denmark to top Group C, Les Bleus put four goals past 2014 world runners-up Argentina in the round of 16, two past Uruguay in the quarterfinals, and one past Belgium in the semis to earn their first trip back to the championship in more than a decade.

Watching France return to form during the past few years has been like seeing an old friend come home after a long time away. Their road back to the summit has been marked by struggle. Personal vendettas, racial divide, ego, and organizational dysfunction led Les Bleus down a path that saw them slip from the world’s elite. Now, just 90 minutes and a group of Croatians stand between them and eternal glory.

The rise of French soccer, and the division of the French public, can be traced, like many things in Europe, to the end of World War II. The conflict left much of France in shambles, and so the country began recruiting laborers from its former colonial empire. Workers from Northern and Central Africa joined those brought in from other European nations to help rebuild. Twenty years later, after an economic boom resulted in a labor shortage, France enlisted more help from its former colonies. The product was one of the largest mass migrations in the modern world, making France one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the region. Around the same time, Les Bleus struggled on the pitch, missing out on a number of international competitions. So the Fédération Française de Football created a network of academies across the republic to attract and develop young talent. It worked.

By the mid-’90s, players who’d entered those institutes had come of age, and France fielded one of the most dominant squads of the modern era. Over the next decade, they’d compete for nearly every major championship for both club and country and set a precedent for years to come. Not only were they among the most skilled the sport has ever seen, but they represented the myriad cultures that made up the country.

As Vox explained earlier this month, France is the birthplace of more athletes competing in Russia than any other country. Twenty-one of the 23 players on Les Bleus were born on French soil (many in the suburbs of Paris) and 29 more represent other teams. Russia 2018 marked the fourth World Cup in which there were more French-born footballers than those from any other country. The multicultural identity of Les Bleus has been a constant since their golden generation announced itself to the world in 1996, when Deschamps and 23-year-old wunderkind Zidane carried France to the semifinals at the European championship. “This was a team of all of France, its ethnic roots testament to a hundred years of French empire,” David Goldblatt wrote in The Ball Is Round. Bernard Lama was from Guyana. Vieira from Senegal. Thuram and Henry, both born in France, were of Guadeloupean descent. David Trezeguet’s, Barthez’s, and Bixente Lizarazu’s families all came from Spanish-speaking nations, and a few others hailed from Ghana and Armenia. But their face was Zidane, whose Algerian roots and superb play made him a focus of interest.

The quiet midfielder was born in a refugee community in Marseille. His parents emigrated before the start of the Algerian War, and made their home in southern France. Zizou was the youngest of five. His father worked at a warehouse, and his mother stayed with the children. The Zidanes weren’t wealthy, but they were prideful. In 2004, Zinedine told The Guardian that his father was his inspiration. “It was my father who taught us that an immigrant must work twice as hard as anybody else,” Zidane said. “That he must never give up.”

He found soccer at age 5. Even as a boy, he showed flashes of his temper. His first coach at AS Cannes remembered that his first few weeks at the club were spent cleaning as punishment for punching an opponent who mocked his upbringing in the French ghetto. Eventually, he worked his way up through the French league and to Juventus, where he won the Ballon d’Or once and Serie A twice, and then to Real Madrid, where his Galacticos won the Champions League.

Around the time when Zidane rose to prominence with Les Bleus, France began to experience a wave of conservatism. In 1995, Jean-Marie Le Pen — the leader of the French far-right-wing party the National Front — won 15 percent of the vote in the presidential election. Over the coming months, the country would see unrest stemming from a number of incidents, notably the removal of more than 200 undocumented African migrants seeking refuge in a Parisian church, and the arrest of Khaled Kelkal, a French Algerian terrorist linked to the Paris Metro bombings in 1995. Hard-line supremacists grew more powerful, and began asking questions in the press about the makeup of Les Bleus, explicitly saying that players who did not sing the national anthem, like Zidane, weren’t French, and implicitly that only the white players were.

If the impact of those sentiments had any negative effect on the team, it was negligible. France entered the 1998 World Cup on home soil ranked fourth globally by Elo, and had lost just four times going back to the beginning of 1994. Les Bleus came out swinging, winning their three group stage games with a plus-8 goal differential despite losing Zidane to a red card late in their third game against Saudi Arabia, and then besting Paraguay, Italy, and Croatia in the knockout rounds to reach their first final. Aimé Jacquet’s squad was battle-tested, but to claim soccer’s ultimate prize, they’d have to go through Brazil — the defending champions, heavy favorites, and top-ranked team by both Elo and FIFA. Even with Ronaldo hampered by a debilitating illness, Brazil was no easy beat. And so when his country needed him most, Zidane stepped up.

Two days before Bastille Day, the Frenchman led Les Bleus to glory. He scored twice before the half, and Emmanuel Petit added a third just before the final whistle to give France the win, 3–0. In Paris, hundreds of thousands flooded the Champs-Élysées. It was the largest gathering on the street since the end of World War II. And at the end of the road was Zidane’s face projected on the Arc du Triomphe.

The man who refused to sing La Marseillaise became more than a footballer. Fans chanted “Zidane for president.” He was the face of what a country defined by diversity could be. As Netflix’s 2016 documentary Les Bleus: Another History of France recounts, “Once blue-white-red, France [became] black-white-Arab. Three words that define and claim a new collective identity.”

Black-White-Arab, or Black-Blanc-Beur (French slang for Arab) became a rallying cry. Three identities, as one, to achieve things never before dreamed. But the honeymoon period was short-lived. In 2002, Le Pen’s National Front again made gains in the presidential election, winning enough of the vote to force a second round with incumbent Jacques Chirac. It was at this time that Zidane, a firebrand on the pitch but private off it, broke his silence.

“When you see a rate of abstention of 30 percent resulting in a second round between Chirac and the other, we have to tell the people that they need to vote,” Zidane said in April of that year, refusing to mention Le Pen by name. “And again, I’m measuring my words when I say this, they have to think of the consequences of voting for a party that doesn’t align in any way with our country’s values.”

His words were heeded. Chirac won reelection with more than 80 percent of the vote. But the separatist sentiments Le Pen preached would continue to bubble under the surface for decades. They arose again in 2002, when the French team crashed out of the World Cup in their title defense, taking just one point and finishing last in the group stage. After the disaster in South Korea and Japan and a failed defense of the European title in 2004 that ended with a quarterfinal exit, the Federation appointed Raymond Domenech to lead the team. The former defender implemented wholesale changes, encouraging players to sing in choirs, take acting classes, and study the team and the nation’s history. Zidane, who’d retired from the national team after the continental championships, returned for one more shot at the World Cup.

Just as there was before his previous two tournaments, unrest in France spiked before the 2006 World Cup. In 2005, two Muslim teenagers were electrocuted to death and a third was severely injured in a Paris suburb when running from police who suspected them of being responsible for a nearby break-in. The incident sparked riots, with demands of justice for the boys. It would not come. Once again, France’s most famous Muslim took the field under a cloud of conflict. Black-Blanc-Beur, demographer Michèle Tribalat said, did more for integration than years of political will. Eight years later, in his final tournament as a professional athlete, Zidane carried the burden of mollifying the conflict once more.

France struggled in its first two games, drawing Switzerland and South Korea before escaping the group stage with a victory over Togo without Zidane, who’d been suspended for accumulating too many yellow cards. A 3–1 thumping of Spain in the round of 16 and a deconstruction of Brazil in the quarters, both of which were among the best games of Zidane’s international career, set up a semifinal tie with Portugal. The game was evenly matched, just as it was when the pair faced off in the 2000 Euros semifinal, and the source of the decisive goal was the same: a game-winning strike from the spot by the captain. With the victory, France advanced to the final against Italy. While Les Bleus weren’t the underdogs they were in 1998, the bettors still favored Italy.

Seven minutes in, France’s Florent Malouda earned a penalty after being taken down by Materazzi. Zidane marched up to the spot and stared down the keeper, Gianluigi Buffon. When the whistle blew, Buffon made his choice, diving right as the Frenchman cooly chipped the ball off the crossbar and into the net. There was nothing Buffon could do but watch as the Panenka gave Les Bleus an early lead. Twelve minutes later Italy equalized off a Materazzi header. The two stayed locked at one goal apiece for the remainder of extra time to force penalties, but not before Zidane’s head met Materazzi’s chest.

The Italian later denied reports that he’d called Zidane a terrorist, and rumors swirled that he’d insulted the midfielder’s mother. It wasn’t until 2016 that he admitted he spoke ill of Zidane’s sister. Whatever the specifics of the abuse were, Zidane earned a straight red. It would be the legend’s last act as a professional footballer.

France was able to survive the final 10 minutes of extra time down a man and without their captain, but lost 5–3 in penalties. Weeks after the match, he gave an interview explaining his actions.

“I can’t say I am proud of what I did,” Zidane said. “That said, I don’t regret it. Because if I did, that would be like validating all the words that this person told me. And I can’t accept that.”

The loss would be the closest Les Bleus would come to victory for the next 10 years. Over the next decade, France struggled across international competition, losing in the group stage at Euro 2008 and at the 2010 World Cup — the latter of which ended in disgrace when the team staged a mutiny on Domenech for what they believed was the unjust removal of striker Nicolas Anelka from the team. Stars like Patrice Evra and Henry were hounded by the media for leading the betrayal. The latter would never play for the national team again.

In the years that followed, the dysfunction continued. New manager Laurent Blanc distributed national anthems to the players, and ended the practice of halal buffets for dinner, symbolically declaring that a lack of patriotism was to blame for the disaster in South Africa. Later, he would be caught on tape suggesting the federation implement a quota on how many players with African heritage could be allowed in the training academies.

“We’re training a single player stereotype,” Blanc was recorded as saying. “Big, strong, and powerful. And who are the big, strong, powerful players? The blacks. That’s just the way it is.”

He was replaced shortly thereafter. Following his departure, France began to show the signs of an upswing. The old guard was replaced by a newer generation of stars, reaching the quarterfinals at the 2014 World Cup, and the final at the 2016 Euros. The drama hasn’t disappeared, of course. French Algerian striker Karim Benzema was frozen out of the national team picture in 2016 after he was questioned by police in connection to the alleged blackmailing of teammate Mathieu Valbuena. The Madrid star later said his removal was cowardice, and that Deschamps had bent to the “racist part of France.”

And while the new team, led by talents like Pogba and Mbappé, had the potential to challenge the world’s elite, their diversity was once again a point of contention in the homeland. The 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting and Paris attacks opened a wound in the French psyche. Attacking the national stadium was a purposeful strike on a national symbol of unity. And the result was a furthered division. The National Front, now led by Le Pen’s daughter Marine, capitalized on the wave of racial distrust and used dog-whistle language to win influence. Two years after the attacks, she finished second in the presidential election. Her 33.9 percent of the vote was more than the party had ever received.

But on the pitch, Black-Blanc-Beur was as strong as it’d been in years. Starting center back Raphaël Varane is of Martiniquais heritage. Pogba’s parents are Guinean. Mbappé’s father is Cameroonian and his mother is from Algeria, and N’Golo Kanté’s family moved to France from Mali. If France wins against Croatia on Sunday, it won’t just be a victory for one of soccer’s great powers. A second World Cup would go further than that, just as the first did 20 years ago. It matters not that this iteration of Les Bleus sings La Marseillaise with gusto while their predecessors didn’t. The value of this team, like every national team, is that it brings a people together. For 90 minutes, French men and women of all races, ethnicities, religions and politics gather to watch a group of 23 men who look just like they do compete for the most coveted prize in sports. A win on Sunday won’t solve any of France’s issues, but maybe fans will have reason to storm the Champs-Élysées once more, together.