At the Stade de France,
There are times like that in life when you don’t need a lot of signals to understand that you’re going to have a fun evening… and that we would have been better warm, under a blanket, with the cat on our knees. That of Thursday evening, during the League of Nations match between France and Israel is one of them. On arrival, we were not mistaken. With a 0-0 in the form of an infamous purge, the rare spectators who had the courage to brave both the very tense geopolitical context and the game of the French team version DD must have regretted having made the trip.
There were not many of them, to say the least, but they will go down in history, that of the worst crowd ever at the Stade de France for a Blues match with 16,611 poilus recorded. It was enough to walk around the stadium square, almost deserted, an hour and a half before kick-off, to realize that we were going to have a “funny” evening. And once inside, the feeling of emptiness was even more palpable. It felt like an interclass athletics meeting in the depths of the Creuse, minus the country buffet.
Sad spectacle in the stands (and on the pitch)
Difficult for players to motivate themselves in such a context. Even more difficult when, after barely ten minutes of play, crowd movements broke out in the section of the stands where the Israeli supporters had gathered. In numerous videos circulating on social networks, we can see dozens of people, some wearing the Israeli flag on their backs, dealing violent blows to unidentified supporters.
If the stewards quickly managed to restore calm by forming a security cordon between the two camps, the tone was set. And while on the pitch the Blues were struggling to control the ball even remotely, in the stands the Israelis were chanting “Free the hostages” and “Hamas, Hamas, we fuck you…”. A few meters further down, the Irresistible French responded by launching a “To arms”.
Despite everything, the French supporters managed to liven up this evening a little with songs of encouragement, until ten minutes from the end when, faced with the mediocrity of the game offered by the gang to Deschamps, even they broke down. “We’re pissing ourselves off, we’re pissing ourselves off!” ”, they then began to sing, without anyone finding anything to complain about. Because what can we say about the performance of this French team? There are times when it’s better to say nothing and this match clearly falls into that category.
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Even Randal Kolo Muani, the Blues’ scoring machine, had all the difficulty in the world finding second-hand players. It must be said that by charging headlong into the only opponent who got in his way, like this action at the end of the first period, it is more complicated. And after a first act that made you want to smash your head against a bus shelter, the players tried to come back with better intentions. In vain.
Oh, of course, even at this level, the Blues could have won if Peretz had not produced two classy saves on his line, after shots from Zaire-Emery and Nkunku, but divine-football justice ruled that no one deserved to take all three points on Thursday evening. Crossed in the mixed zone at the end of the night, Randal Kolo Muani did the bare minimum, explaining that the Blues “could have done better but we will retain the positive with the qualification”.
Looking forward to Sunday (at 10:50 p.m.)
A few minutes earlier, at a press conference, the coach also admitted that his players had missed out. “We could have done more against a very grouped opponent who gained a lot of time. We had the chances to win that match but we didn’t have the efficiency. Our first half was too quiet. I cannot be satisfied with what we have done,” admitted Deschamps with the look of bad days.
On arrival, this small point is enough for the France team to qualify for the quarter-finals of this formidable (NOOOOOOO) Nations League which will take place next March. Ah, next March, in more than three months, then. What if that was the good news after all? To say that we are finally freed for a moment from these international truces which interest no one. For our part, this is all we will remember from an evening to forget as quickly as possible. Even if there is still one match to play, Sunday, in Italy. Come on, take heart friends, the end of the tunnel is not so far away.
