FRANCE ENJOYS ITS SOCCER PSYCHODRAMA

PARIS. They got into the World Cup via an “illegal” hand (scoring-star Thierry Henry’s fault vs. Ireland), and went out refusing to shake a hand (French coach Raymond Domenech’s snit,.after losing to South Africa and leaving the tournament). For days, the soccer world gaped and giggled at the shenanigans of France’s self-obsessed, so-called team. Les Bleus disgraced themselves on and off the field: vicious rivalries, schoolyard cliques, plots, power struggles, paranoia, obscene insults, even a refusal to train.
All this on regular pay ranging from $330,000 Can. to $1,064,551 Can. – per month. For a team that only tied Uruguay and lost to 17th-rank Mexico and 83rd- rank South Africa. Paris media accuse “indecent” politicians and bureaucrats of squandering public money on themselves ($15,000 Can. on cigars for one man). The Bleus’ self-indulgence matched the trend and made recession-hit French fans apoplectic. “These overpaid clowns don’t represent me” one disgusted matron told me. A retired French ambassador to Canada said “These thugs deserved their kick in the behind.”
It’s shame enough that fans are furious. But President Nicolas Sarkozy has blown the sports psychodrama up into a state scandal. He sent his sports minister to make a Hail Mary speech to players, called a “crisis” meeting of key ministers, and even saw star-player Henry Thursday for an hour at the Élysée Place – amazing in a day of massive street demonstrations on pension reform. In a week when President Barack Obama fired General Stanley McChrystal to show he was in charge of America’s army, Sarko tightened jaw to prove he was in charge of soccer.
Grandstanding in vintage style, Sarkozy called for an all-stakeholders’ pow-wow on le foot (football, as the world outside North America calls soccer). To convey the idea that a spat over a few guys kicking a ball around was an epochal event, he trotted out a 1789 term to promise a football “Estates-General” – now such a tired shorthand that politicians might use it for a colloquium on plumbing or the psychiatric problems of cats.
Nervous French presidents believe their electoral fortunes depend partly on victorious sports teams. Sarkozy’s predecessor Jacques Chirac was convinced that France’s dazzling 1998 World Cup win (along with an anti-fascist front) induced elated voters to back his second term. Sarko shares that view. Already he’s worried about getting re-elected in 2012.
Eager to prove himself the shattered team’s saviour, Sarko will surf the uproar for a few more days. “But scandals in France normally last only four days,” says former Agence France-Presse CEO Henri Pigeat. “If they are exceptionally juicy, maybe eight days.” Public and private investigations will keep this one boiling longer – until Sarkozy can claim he has saved French football – or probably (a favourite boast) “reinvented” it.
The French people will welcome this charade. For by history and inclination, they crave drama, especially “shocking” and “unacceptable” situations allowing them to ride emotional roller-coasters. For to be sickened and aghast, plunged into fury and despair, is just another opportunity to recover and soar – with flair, panache, and consummate Frenchness.
Witness French history. Two thousand years of drama: brave Gauls harrassing Roman legions, the Hundred Years War against English marauders, the French Revolution, Napoleon’s Waterloo, Germany invading France three times (1870-71, 1914 and 1940). France always survives, and rises higher, teach history books.
This panorama of grandeur and decadence, of daring and betrayal, has accustomed the French to defining “interesting” information as “crises.” Even police-blotter incidents, personality conflicts and water shortages are media “dramas.” In sports and science, Frenchmen despise good-enough, not-bad and bronze medals. If they can’t have a rooster-crowing triumph (or, in a pinch, a plausible “moral victory”), they prefer cosmic disaster to mediocrity. Anything but boredom or banality.
Never mind today’s snarky, spoiled-brat-mocking foreign press. The French, behind their teeth-gritting, cursing and contempt for Les Bleus, are not really unhappy. They are just tactically and temporarily piqued. Deep down, they enjoy the World Cup mess, and wallow in the shame and disgrace. They’re convinced France will bounce back, as always, and astonish the world. By, for example, winning another World Cup. Or by losing another one in an apocalypse of incompetence.
Either way, no matter: most Frenchmen just want excitement. In 1977, French politician Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg published L’État-spectacle – “The Show-biz State” predicting that all politics were becoming imagery and stagecraft. And that politics and entertainment would soon become one.
Charles de Gaulle, no amateur at theatrics, believed that “mediocrity provokes drama.” Now with a cabinet -- and a nation? – of drama queens, Sarkozy has sought drama by raising a less-than-mediocre gang, with their rude and “illegal” hands, to national priority. Instead, he has dragged the State into farce, and regaled the people with low vaudeville.