A political battle won, French stars return to a football battle

For once, Didier Deschamps could look back on a press conference that passed off almost without incident. Given the timing, that seemed unlikely. On Sunday, French voters had sharply condemned their country’s resurgent far-right team in a seismic parliamentary election. On Tuesday, the country’s increasingly activist soccer team will face Spain in a European Championship semifinal.

Between the two sat an apparition of Deschamps, the coach of the French national team, in the full megawatt glow of the world news media. While he has always been inscrutable, his players are not. Over the past month, half a dozen members of his team have made their feelings about the rise of the Rally of the National perfectly clear.

Striker Marcus Thuram called on the French to “fight every day” against the threat of the far-right. Defender Jules Koundé expressed hope that the country would reject those who “want to take away our freedom.” His teammate Ibrahima Konaté insisted that power should not be given to “certain people who seek division.”

Deschamps might have expected some awkward exchanges on Monday. Instead, he was asked the sort of questions that must have come as a welcome relief. How fit was Kylian Mbappé? What does he think of the Spanish midfield?

There was only one moment of suspense. Deschamps was asked by a Swedish journalist whether it would be fair to characterize his French team as a bit, well, dull: after all, they had managed to reach the semi-finals of the tournament without scoring a goal from open play.

“If you’re bored, watch something else,” Deschamps replied. “You don’t have to watch. We have the ability to make France happy with our results. If the Swedes are bored, I don’t care so much.”

Compared to the issues that have plagued the French squad over the past month, the entire press conference could easily be dismissed as nothing more than light-hearted relief. Football is traditionally apolitical, both by habit and by inclination. Players generally refuse to give their opinion on any issue that carries even a hint of controversy.

However, a significant portion of Deschamps’ squad at this tournament clearly felt that this was not an option.

Thuram, whose politically active father won a World Cup for France, was among the first to speak out. Another forward, Ousmane Dembélé, noted that “alarm bells were ringing” and asked his compatriots to “gather and come together to vote.”

Mbappé, the team’s captain and most influential cultural figure, warned that “the extremes are at the gates of power” and admitted he “does not want to represent a country that does not correspond to my values, or our values.”

“I hope my vote carries as much weight as possible,” he said as the election approached. “I hope we make the right choice and that we are still proud to wear the French national team kit on July 7.”

The players’ message was clear, but modulated enough not to be explicit. That approach didn’t last long. When the results of the first round of the election came in—a day before France’s first knockout match of the tournament—the Rassemblement National had won 33 percent of the vote. France, the country and the team, suddenly faced the prospect of a far-right party dominating the government.

When Mbappé spoke a few days later, he left no doubt about his position. “It is an urgent situation,” he said. “We cannot leave our country in the hands of these people. It is urgent. We saw the results, it is catastrophic. We really hope that it will change, that everyone will unite, vote and vote for the right party.”

Whether that intervention – or the mounting pressure exerted throughout the tournament by the players, some of the most prominent figures in French public life – made any difference as the country went back to the polls on Sunday is impossible to say.

It certainly will not have been as important a decision as the decision of the left and coalitions in France to form a united front and withdraw candidates from some 200 districts so as not to divide the votes of the anti-Rally National.

That the players’ voices mattered was evident in the way their comments were received during Euro 2024. France’s far-right national team has long viewed the country’s national team with disdain. In 1998, when a multi-ethnic squad led France to its first World Cup victory, Jean-Marie Le Pen — the founder of the Front National, the organization that later became Rally National — suggested the team was “artificial” because it contained too many non-white players.

Eight years later, as France headed toward another World Cup final, Le Pen complained that the country “could not recognize itself” in a national team inspired by Zinedine Zidane, a playmaker of Algerian descent, and led by Lilian Thuram, a defender born in Guadeloupe.

Over the past month, Mbappé, Dembélé and the others have provoked a similar reaction from Le Pen’s heirs, both ideological and genetic.

“I’m a little ashamed to see these athletes teaching people who can’t get by anymore, who don’t feel safe anymore, who don’t have the chance to live in neighborhoods protected by security guards,” said Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old president of Rally National. His vice-president, Sébastian Chenu, accused Mbappé of being “very disconnected from reality.”

Marine Le Pen, the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the most prominent member of Rassemblement National, advised “actors, footballers and singers” not to “come forward and tell the French how to vote.”

“It’s not starting to be well received in our country,” she said. “The French are tired of being reprimanded and advised on how to vote. This election is an emancipation election in which the French want to regain control of their destiny and vote the way they want.”

On Sunday, that indeed seemed to happen, although not quite in the way Mrs Le Pen had hoped.

However, within the French selection there was a feeling of overwhelming “relief”, as Koundé said on social media. Several of his teammates agreed with him: Marcus Thuram congratulated “all those who stood up to the threat that hangs over our beautiful country.” Midfielder Aurélien Tchouaméni described Sunday’s results as “the victory of the people.”

The political situation is of course much more complex than that. The sporting one is not. France have a match on Tuesday, against an impressive Spanish team, for a place in the Euro 2024 final. For the first time in the tournament, many of their stars have made it clear that they are still proud to fly their country’s flag.