Advertisement

FRENCH IMPRESSIONS: Three Times Staff Writers Reflect on Covering Soccer’s Premiere Event

Share
TIMES STAFF WRITER

Four hours before France was to kick off the 1998 World Cup final against Brazil, I walked out of my rented apartment in the Marais district, turned left toward my customary metro entrance near the Hotel de Ville plaza and stepped straight into Woodstock.

No Hendrix--only the nonstop cacophony of car horns honking, air-horns buzzing like swarming killer bees and a Rue-rumbling a cappella chorus of “Allez France! Allez! “

The plaza was already overrun by red, white and blue revelers, thousands of them, vacuum-packed around a mammoth video screen, with the overflow spilling across Rue de Rivoli and into the tiny tributaries that lead to my usually quiet neighborhood--now a full-on raging Les Headbanguers Ball.

Advertisement

There were Bleus fans everywhere. Perched on lampposts. Climbing atop statues. Hanging out of trees. Churning huge French flags in the dusty sunshine. Hoisting beer cans and wine bottles toward the monolithic video screen, which would not be screening any live soccer for another four hours.

Later that night, and well into the morning, the Champs-Elysees would be transformed into the largest sardine tin in France--only the sardines were French fans. France had just upset Brazil to win its first World Cup, ending a 68-year drought, and the mass celebration was the largest Paris had seen since the Allies liberated the city from the Germans in 1944.

Woodstock and Liberation Day, all within an eight-hour span.

Try matching that, Paul Tagliabue.

I wish every condescending newsroom editor [“It’s only soccer”] and every narrow-minded American sportswriter [“I need a fresh column angle today--say, let’s bash the World Cup!”] could have spent this one Sunday in Paris, an overnighter guaranteed to knock the blinders off for good.

Super Sunday?

The NFL should be sued for deceptive advertising.

The World Series?

A backyard barbecue by comparison.

The NBA finals? The Stanley Cup? The Olympics?

World Cup wannabes, each and every one.

It is not simply a soccer issue. Soccer is only the common currency--it happens to be the one sport closest to a global pastime, played universally, if not always at the same emotional pitch. If every country from Albania to Zaire played croquet, then the World Cup of croquet would have its billion-plus television audience, its frenzied partyers in face paint and silly hats, even its fringe hooligan element.

(This analogy works only to a point, of course. If that was croquet France and Brazil were playing at Stade de France, Zinedine Zidane would not be the national hero he is today, although he might have knocked himself out trying. Very hard, and ill-advised, to try and head a croquet ball.)

There is a reason soccer is sport’s Esperanto, its universal language. That is a discourse for another time; suffice it to say, the small corps of American media in France for the tournament understands.

Advertisement

That is why they were here in the first place. Many had to twist arms, cajole, even beg the home office to send them here. Others paid their own way, or split the difference with their bosses, or squatted with colleagues and scavenged for cheap digs--anything they had to do, just to get here.

That was why there were so many beaming faces in Marseille for last week’s semifinal between Brazil and Holland. After a month of train-hopping across the country and battling FIFA inefficiency--at times this World Cup felt like Atlanta ‘96, only with different accents--and getting shunted to the bottom of the press-seating priority list once the United States was eliminated, American reporters were stunned to find themselves with better seats than FIFA President Sepp Blatter and France 98 chairman Michel Platini.

“FIFA must have screwed up,” Yanks joked among themselves as they reveled in the privileged view, barely a throw-in away from Dennis Bergkamp.

Funny, but I can’t recall similar joy spontaneously breaking out in any baseball press box I’ve ever encountered.

To understand the World Cup is to be driven to mad, half-looped extremes. Which partially explains why Times colleague Grahame L. Jones, Miami Herald soccer writer Michelle Kaufman and I were riding in the back of a windowless van at one in the morning after Argentina had eliminated England on penalty kicks in Saint-Etienne.

Stranded outside the press center with a 1:30 train to Paris to catch and no taxi in sight, Michelle flagged down a young man in a van driving past. In frantic, fractured French, we pleaded our predicament--we needed a ride to the Gare--and, with a smile and a nod, he opened the door to his van to us.

Advertisement

Inside, to the best of my foggy recollection, was an old mattress, a half-inflated soccer ball, some scattered tools, who knows what else.

Soon the door was closed and there we were, in total darkness, having trusted a total stranger to shuttle us to safety.

“I don’t know,” I said anxiously as the van began rumbling, “I’ve seen too many Joe Pesci movies start this way.”

Of course, the young driver couldn’t have been friendlier or more diligent, and soon the door was unlocked, we could see again, and there were the long lines of disgruntled English supporters waiting to board the train.

From one crisis to another--that was the day-to-day, venue-to-venue routine for every reporter here. It was grueling, it was a grind, it was my body hitting the wall on Day 31 and staggering to the exhausting finish addled on aspirin and flu medicine.

I can’t wait for the next one.

Advertisement