1998

Les Bleus: The History of French Football

Course 1 · Chapter 7 · 1998: Jacquet, Zidane and the Rainbow Nation

On 12 July 1998 France beat Brazil 3-0 in the final of the World Cup at the Stade de France and won the trophy for the first time. A million or more people filled the Champs-Élysées that night, and the team was hailed as a symbol of a new, mixed France. This chapter covers the preparation, the squad, the tournament, the slogan that came to describe it and the arguments that followed, and the victory at Euro 2000 that confirmed it. Names, dates and scores are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

The Build-Up

Hosting

France won the right to host the 1998 tournament in a FIFA vote in 1992, ahead of Morocco (check). It was the first World Cup with 32 teams. A new national stadium, the Stade de France at Saint-Denis, north of Paris, was built for the event and opened in January 1998 (check).

The coach

Aimé Jacquet, a former Saint-Étienne player (Chapter 5), became national coach in 1993 after the failure to reach the 1994 World Cup (Chapter 6). He was criticised for years, notably by the sports daily L'Équipe, for his cautious approach and for leaving out stars such as Eric Cantona and David Ginola (check). He announced beforehand that he would leave after the tournament.

The doubters

Before the tournament few predicted victory. France had not won a major trophy since Euro 1984, had no obvious striker and played a pragmatic style built round a strong defence and a creative midfield. The scepticism is part of the legend (check).

A team, not a star The 1998 side is best described as a well-organised team whose best player, Zinedine Zidane, was one of several. Its strength was the defence, which conceded only two goals in the tournament (check), a leader in Didier Deschamps (the captain) and a midfield of Deschamps, Emmanuel Petit and Zidane. This is worth remembering when the team is turned into a symbol: it won because it was a good side.

The Squad

Player (check each)Background
Zinedine ZidaneBorn in Marseille in 1972 to parents from Kabylie in Algeria; the best player of the team.
Marcel DesaillyBorn in Accra, Ghana, and brought to France as a child.
Lilian ThuramBorn in Guadeloupe, in the French Antilles, and the scorer of both goals in the semi-final.
Christian KarembeuBorn in New Caledonia, of Kanak origin.
Patrick VieiraBorn in Dakar, Senegal.
Youri DjorkaeffBorn near Lyon to a father of Kalmyk and a mother of Polish descent (check).
Didier Deschamps, Laurent Blanc, Fabien Barthez, Emmanuel PetitBorn in France, in places such as Bayonne, Alès, Lavelanet and Dieppe (check).

The squad drew on Black, North African, overseas and white French backgrounds. That is a statement of fact about the players' origins. What it meant for French society is the subject of argument (below).

The Tournament

Round (check each)Result
Group stageSouth Africa 3-0, Saudi Arabia 4-0 (Zidane sent off), Denmark 2-1.
Round of 16Paraguay 1-0, with a "golden goal" in extra time by Laurent Blanc, the first in World Cup history.
Quarter-finalItaly 0-0, won 4-3 on penalties.
Semi-finalCroatia 2-1, both goals by Lilian Thuram, the only two he scored for France. Blanc was suspended for the final after a sending-off.
FinalBrazil 3-0, with two goals from Zidane (headers from corners) and one from Emmanuel Petit.

Before the final there was confusion over whether Brazil's striker Ronaldo would play, after a reported seizure earlier in the day. He played, but was clearly not at his best (check). The explanation remains disputed.

Black-Blanc-Beur

  • The slogan. The press and politicians described the team as "black-blanc-beur", a pun on the flag's blue-white-red, meaning black, white and beur (a slang word for French people of North African descent) (check).
  • The context. The leader of the far-right National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, had criticised the national team in 1996 as "artificial" because of its mixed origins (check). The 1998 win was seen by many as an answer.
  • The hope. Commentators said the team showed that integration worked, and the mood on the Champs-Élysées and in the suburbs was celebratory. Zidane's image was projected on the Arc de Triomphe (check).
  • The doubts. Sociologists and historians noted that the effect on attitudes was short-lived: opinion polls showed a brief rise in positive views and then a return to earlier levels (check). The 2002 presidential election, in which Le Pen reached the second round, and the riots in suburbs in 2005 are cited as evidence that a football win did not remove social divisions (check).
  • What can be said. The 1998 team was a source of real national pride and showed the diversity of French society. It did not by itself change employment, housing or discrimination. "Miracle" is a word to test, not to repeat.

Euro 2000

Under Roger Lemerre, Jacquet's assistant, France went on to win the European Championship in 2000, held in Belgium and the Netherlands. It beat Italy 2-1 in the final in Rotterdam, with a late equaliser from Sylvain Wiltord and a golden goal from David Trezeguet (check). France was then the world and European champion at the same time, as West Germany had been in 1974 (check). The team's tournament record in the following years, however, was poor (Chapter 8).

A British comparison The opening match of the 1998 World Cup was Brazil against Scotland at the Stade de France, and Scotland lost 2-1 in a game remembered for John Collins's penalty and Tom Boyd's own goal (check). The Tartan Army's good-humoured presence in Paris was widely reported (check). England went out to Argentina on penalties, after the sending-off of David Beckham (check). The British parallel for the "team as symbol" idea is perhaps the 2012 London Olympics and the Team GB story of Jessica Ennis-Hill, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford (check), another case where success was read as proof of a national mood.
Check the details The 1998 story has been told so often that a polished version has replaced the record. Check the group scores, the minute of each goal and the numbers of the crowd on the Champs-Élysées against FIFA's records and contemporary reports. Statements about the effect on social attitudes should be checked against opinion-poll and academic sources.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Apply the six questions (Chapter 1) to the claim "The 1998 team was a multicultural miracle that changed France".

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Draw a one-page map of the 1998 tournament (group, round of 16, quarter, semi, final) with the scores and note the three results you would check first.

→ Solution
Exercise 3

List the kinds of sources you would use to test whether 1998 changed French attitudes, and say what each can and cannot show.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • 1998: France 3-0 Brazil at the Stade de France; Zidane two goals, Petit one (check)
  • People: Aimé Jacquet, Didier Deschamps, Zinedine Zidane, Lilian Thuram, Roger Lemerre
  • Slogan: black-blanc-beur, and the debate about it
  • 2000: European champions, beating Italy with a golden goal (check)