Paris, France: Losing the World Cup Final

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Paris, France: Losing the World Cup Final

Words by: Bence X. Szechenyi

I travelled to Paris to watch France play in the World Cup final. It was my intention to travel to one of the countries playing in the final and Buenos Aires was a bit too far. I brought my computer with me to watch the Morocco versus France semi-final and booked my ticket as soon the final whistle sounded.

If France had won the tournament, I would have been able to write a debauched article, something like “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.” Obviously, France lost, but this made the experience no less interesting.

I have been in love with the sport of football my entire life. There have been many fan moments that are seared into my memory, but no tournament is as important as the World Cup. At the onset of the 2010 World Cup, when I was twelve years old, I was in love with the Spanish team. I even posted the headshots of every Spanish player on Facebook to demonstrate my loyalty. I’ll never forget executing a knee slide on the floor of a bar as David Villa did the same on TV. That tournament taught me what sport can do, the passion it can evoke.

One thing that complicates all this though is that despite my absolute fiery passion at the time I am not Spanish and have no connection to Spain. I had not even visited the nation at that point. My passion for the team was spawned from various influences, none of which were my family or identity. That didn’t matter to me at the time, I didn’t fully understand the World Cup’s ties to nationality.

As I learned about the world and where I come from, I haven’t been able to find the same level of passion for international football teams. I felt awkward about passionately coopting a national team that I have no connection to. 

I ended up primarily just rooting for countries I had visited, liked, or had friends and family from. It was never the complete passion, the full-bodied joy and gut-wrenching nervousness that compelled me to hit a knee slide in-between people's tables. I understood myself to be adjacent to the real fans, who’s nation was being represented. I wanted to be in the capital city of a team playing in the final in the hopes of experiencing this passion again. The people around me, and their genuine connection to the match, would hopefully carry me along and make me feel engaged like I was twelve again. 

People may be wondering why the United States, the country I grew up in, never elicited this passion from me. This is not a simple question to answer. I have tried to get behind the team multiple times, I once posed for a picture with two friends with the “A” in USA painted on my chest and an American flag in hand. I tried again this tournament, but I can never get behind the team like I once did for the Spanish. Maybe anyone who has listened to a match with an American commentator can comprehend why.

I theorize that passion for the World Cup is tied to patriotism. The players represent their nation, but does loving a team mean you have to love the nation? Does a team represent their nation's citizens, governments, or both? This relationship, between politics and sport have been important in events like the World Cup and the Olympics.

This World Cup has sparked considerable discussion surrounding this overlap. FIFA, the sport’s governing body, has been heavily criticized for their decision to allow Qatar to host the tournament. Critics highlight the nation's human rights abuses, the deaths of more than 6,500 migrant workers in the construction of the stadiums for the tournament, as well as the confirmed bribery and corruption utilized to secure their right to host.

Qatar and FIFA have seemed to push for the separation of sport and politics, with the host country make controversial steps to limit the discussion of certain politics. This included the banning of rainbow captain armbands and confiscating fans political banners and flags in support of LGBTQ+ communities or the Iranian protestors. The German national team covered their mouths for one of their pre-match team photos, a protest these efforts to limit politics. I heard many people argue that they should just play the game and not bring politics into it. In an international tournament like the World Cup, I am not sure how much that is possible. In this video, asking Croatians to describe Luca Modric in one word, someone casually slips in the word “patriot.” If Luca Modric is a patriot, and representing your country is a patriotic act, then it would be impossible to differentiate the team from national interests. Should the line be drawn so literally? I really don’t know. 

The day of the final I traversed Paris looking for patriotism. I found a city reminiscent of the day before, the same people opening the same shops. As it got closer to the match, I saw more people with France gear on, but I didn’t notice any major shift in the city’s energy on the big day. There were some places, bars and restaurants, that had French flags on display, showing support for the team, but the whole city was not cloaked in pride in the way I might have expected it to be. I had seen images of Morocco and Argentina where flags were everywhere, covering whole streets. A French friend of mine argued that the flag had been coopted by the far-right and unfortunately associated with this political allegiance. The links between patriotism, nationalism, and the far-right could have turned members of the left away from football fanaticism. This seems plausible to me.

Four hours before kickoff, queues began forming outside of bars. It was late enough in the day now that the fans had taken to the streets. I was meeting my Parisian friends at a bar at 1 PM, three hours before kickoff. The line was very long by the time I got there and got shockingly long by the time they started letting people in. My friend told me the capacity of the place was seven-hundred and there must have been far more than that in the line. Luckily for me, the owner was a family friend of one of my cohort and so we sidestepped the line and went in early. 

The place itself used to be a monastery. We piled into a large room that clearly used to be a chapel. There was massive screen at the front, a bar on one side, and that was it. It was an amazing place to watch a match, the walls were patched and faded, showing age, the ceiling vaulted. It was an epic space. We stood around with a beer chatting, and before long we had no room to move. It was so crowded that taking off my jacket involved some contortion. 

The intensity rose expectedly. People cheered loudly when French players were shown on screen, waved French flags, and sang the national anthem repeatedly. The energy was palpable, and I became nervous about the game, reminding me of when I was twelve. 

France played terribly in the first half and were losing by two goals at halftime. There seemed to be no chance for a comeback based on the way the team was playing. The crowd was quiet, the room felt shell-shocked. No one talked much during halftime, just piled to the bar and then shoved back towards the screen. With France playing so poorly, I was wrestling despair. Had I flown all the way to Paris just to watch a country’s hope get instantly crushed? There was no room for passion when your team is getting stomped out. 

Mbappe’s first goal changed everything. It was a complete reversal in mood. From being downtrodden and depressed, the room came alive, bubbling like boiling water. People were jumping, singing Mbappe’s name, my friends and I were holding onto each other, unable to contain our emotions or fully express them. We were feeling the match, not just watching it.

[Video of the reaction to Mbappe's first goal]

His second goal sent the place into hysterics. Beer was launched from cups, creating a shower. At one point someone had jumped on my back, then I jumped on someone else. It was incredible. When Messi scored in extra time, the depression didn’t return. We had been filled with belief. This was rewarded when Mbappe completed his hattrick, restoring the room to absolute hysterics. 

[Video of the reaction to Mbappe's third goal]

The penalties were still and silent. When the last penalty was scored by Argentina, and they won, the man in front of me spun around and said “c’est la vie,” as he pushed towards the exit. The tension and nervousness throughout the shootout had morphed into shock. I looked around and saw people with spaced-out eyes like they had just been awakened from a long nap. People streamed out of the venue, no interest in anything after the final kick.

It was raining and cold outside, which didn’t help the mood. My friends just wanted to go home, their big plans for the night had evaporated. It was obvious the night was over. Everyone I looked at had their shoulders hunched and looked to be trudging towards home. People carried un-popped champaign bottles and unlit fireworks, sad symbols of the night that could have been.

I was distraught too, thinking about the fun that I would have had if the penalties had gone a little differently. In that moment I felt that football was explicitly political because you know that a national team loosing will send a huge swarth of a country’s population home that night disappointed and depressed. Defeating a country in a big football match is inflicting some amount of sadness on many of its people. 

My friends headed home, deflated. I decided to go to Champs-Élysées. We were planning to go to the famous avenue to celebrate if France won, so I decided to check it out anyways. The scene I found was absurd. 

People were there in large numbers despite the loss. I was taking a second to stare up at the Arc de Triomphe when I heard a firework go off to my left, further down the avenue. I went to go investigate and saw riot police running onto the street, tackling a man to the floor. Other young men, mostly in tracksuits with balaclavas, were running off to the sides of the street or sprinting away from the police further down the avenue. After a short burst of sprinting, with the tackled man in the process of being arrested, the officers formed a line, slowly advancing towards the bunch of young men who had regrouped further down the way. 

It was like a game. The police would form a line, the young men would stand in a group, sometimes taunting them, and eventually the police would charge, usually grabbing one or two people, and the rest would scatter. This happened again and again. I walked around the line of police and went to join the young men on their side of the game. I got a little too close to the police line at one point and was shoved gruffly off the street. I decided to stop playing then. 

The young men were not united in any message or characteristic. Some were draped in French flags, a few others had Algerian or Moroccan flags draped over their shoulders. Some chanted for Messi, others for Mbappe. I heard some chanting for Algeria, others for France. 

In one particularly strange moment, a group of young men were aggressively singing the French national anthem in the face of the riot police, as if taunting them. I usually associate national anthems with the police. It was so strange to see a display of patriotism as a taunt of the nation’s authorities.

There were other reporters there, mostly TV from what I could tell. Many were dressed absurdly, resembling the riot police themselves, with press written on their helmets and vests. One was in a full military looking outfit, combat boots and all. That struck me as funny given the silly nature of the game taking place. 

As I headed down towards the bottom of the avenue, things started escalating. Police vehicles had formed an imposing blockade. A large group of mostly young men had formed opposite them. Tensions were higher here, the young men started throwing things and shooting fireworks at the police. Tools for celebration, beer bottles and fireworks, had been turned to weapons. It was dramatic, loud bangs and bright explosions at the feet of officers dressed more like military than police. 

One young man wielded a long pipe that repeatedly shot fireworks. He aimed it right at the police line, peppering them. His companions were cheering, but I guess this was a stroke too far and the police charged in full force. In the haste to retreat, the wand was dropped, and a firework shot over the heads of onlookers at the side of the street. It exploded behind us, and we were sent scattering. 

[Video of clash with police]

This escalation was enough for police who began a more aggressive advance, securing the street and not allowing the young men to regroup. They even forced those of us on the sidewalk back up the avenue towards the Arc de Triomphe. The conflict was mostly ended once they took over the street. People were still gathered on the sidewalks, one guy lit a blue flare, people continued their conflicting chants, and the occasional firework still went off, but the game was over, the temperature had been lowered. 

I really don’t know what to make of what I saw and experienced. When I asked people at the scene why this was happening, they told me they didn’t know. One journalist in full tactical gear told me the police were trying to clear the street to resume traffic. I initially thought it was totally unnecessary for the police to interfere, but I was told that full riots had broken out in the past which is why the police wanted to disperse the crowd. 

Some French friends of mine brushed my story off with a laugh saying people are crazy, but other extrapolated more meaning. A French lawyer friend of mine from Paris told me that many of the people I saw there hated France, a residual hatred dating back to the colonial era. This was an outburst of anger. Younger French friends told me they are just troublemakers or were releasing emotion from the intensity of the match. This is common in France today, I was told repeatedly. Most of the people I saw in the streets clashing with police were from suburbs, according to one of the young men. The same types of suburbs that produced Kylian Mbappe.

Riots happen among sports fans happen from time to time, so it's possible that I am over-thinking this night and its significance, but something about this display felt like genuine unrest. An articulation of existing dissatisfaction. I am left to wonder what Champs-Élysées would have looked like if France had won. Would people still have clashed with police? Did losing the match directly correlate to this outburst of social unrest? If so, then football is certainly more than just a game, and the results of matches would seem to have societal consequences.