France: Les Bleus and a Nation United

France 98 has an opening that should belong to a novel: the night before the World Cup Final, Ronaldo — the best player in the world, Brazil's talisman, the man on whom the result depended — experienced a convulsive episode in his hotel room. He was taken from the initial team sheet; reinstated an hour before kickoff; played. His performance was that of a man not fully present, his movement slow, his decisions delayed. Brazil lost 3-0. The cause of the episode remains officially unexplained.

Zidane's two first-half headers — both from corners, both placed with precision into the same corner of Taffarel's net — settled the match before halftime. The Algerian-descended midfielder from Marseille heading France into a World Cup lead, twice, at the Stade de France, in front of 80,000 French supporters: the moment was politically resonant before it was a football fact. President Chirac watched from the VIP box. Emmanuel Petit converted in injury time after a Brazilian defensive collapse.

The squad that Aimé Jacquet had assembled represented something that France had been arguing about for years. "Black, Blanc, Beur" — Black, White, Arab — the slogan attached to a squad whose ethnic diversity made visible what French republicans maintained was invisible: that nationality was determined by citizenship, not origin. Zidane, Thuram, Vieira, Desailly, Karembeu — the mix of backgrounds and origins that had, in a previous France, been a source of cultural friction, were suddenly the source of national pride. The summer of 1998, for approximately six weeks, the argument paused.

The following day's celebrations on the Champs-Élysées were the largest gathering in Paris since the Liberation in 1944. A million people, possibly more, in the streets in the small hours of the morning. Zidane's face projected onto the Arc de Triomphe. The sense, widely reported and widely felt, that football had temporarily resolved something that politics could not. The sense did not last. But for those six weeks, from the opening match against South Africa to the final minutes against Brazil, France had found in football an image of itself that it could love without reservation.

MATCH FOOTAGE

1998

France 3–0 Brazil

1998

Netherlands 2–1 Argentina

1998

France 2–1 Croatia

1998

Brazil 1–1 Netherlands (4–2 pen)

1998

Argentina 2–2 England (4–3 pen)

1998

France 2–1 Denmark