France’s response to World Cup failure is just . . . so . . . French
What you should never forget is that the blood of Napoleon runs through these people. Sacre bleu, you should see them cramming their luggage into an overhead bin on my Air France flight in the heat of summer. Chocolatiers and fashion models aside, these are a very tough people, the French. Soccer should be easy for them. But it no longer is.
There’s this guy in a cafe on the Left Bank, face like a leather loafer, sitting at the table along the sidewalk while nursing his wine and watching the women in summer dresses pedal past on bicycles. He says he’s still way too sad to talk about what happened to the French soccer team in South Africa.
For a while, I was too — heck, I think we all were, but we blasted right through those emotions the way Americans do. The French, to their discredit, are more melancholy about their defeats. Napoleon died a long time ago, after all, and frankly things have never really been the same since.
What happened to the French at the World Cup was ugly on many levels, “LINDSAY LOHAN ARRESTED WHILE SWIMMING IN TIDAL BASIN”-ugly. As you’ll probably recall, the star player threw a hissy fit, while playing for a coach of dubious merit. I could convey the details of their exchange, except it would get me fired. Leave it said that what the star player said to the coach is anatomically impossible.
In true French fashion, the players all went on strike in support of the malcontent, refusing to practice. Refusing to do things is almost as French as bad music.
“So how are people taking to what happened in the World Cup?” I ask the shuttle driver from Charles de Gaulle Airport.
“The Louvre is a very nice museum,” he answers.
So, yes, they’re in denial about the whole World Cup thing; who wouldn’t be? When you collapse in such delicious fashion on the world stage, all you can do is pretend it doesn’t mean as much as it does. I don’t know that the U.S. has ever suffered the equivalent of this, other than the annual deflowering of the Chicago Cubs, or all the embarrassing things that used to go on with the University of Miami football team. True, the Denver Broncos used to collapse in spectacular ways in Super Bowls, but then John Elway came along to erase all that. No, other than Lohan, there is no real precedent for this level of national shame.
“You should’ve seen this bar,” says Sasha White, a Temple University student summering at the Frog and the Princess pub. “People were drinking themselves retarded.
“When they played Mexico, either people wanted to go home and not be around people for a while, or they wanted to get wasted.”
“We expected it,” says barman Francois Dedieu. “We weren’t surprised.”
Through it all runs this undercurrent of disenchantment. World Cup teams are often made up of mercenaries with only tangential ties to the motherland. There is also a coming to terms with what France is today, a simmering melting pot.
“There was tension over the racial makeup of the team,” explains David Ng, a Parisian originally from Hong Kong. “We have a saying in China: Doesn’t matter if it’s a black cat or a white cat. If the cat can catch a mouse, it’s a good cat.”
Thing is, the French have this very twisted notion as to what sports should be. Almost none of the bars have TVs — only flickering candles — and if they did there would be nothing to show. Here, there is only soccer, and a little bike race called the Tour de France. An annual tennis meet warms the summer for a while, and in the south of the country, they have rugby. Strangely, NASCAR has yet to gain a foothold.
Instead of sports, they do all sorts of crazy things with their time. They chase each other around parks and take long, decadent lunches. In America, we’re all eating at our desks and checking Facebook. Here, workers spend the lunch hour at sidewalk tables, sipping coffee and planning their August flings. It’s no way to live, if you ask me, but c’est la vie.
By the way, you should hear me conversing with these French.
“Bonjour, monsieur,” the bellman says.
“Bonjour yourself!” I say back brightly.
The communication between them and me is so rich that I plan to stay on a while. I think I could do them a lot of good. I could open a true sports bar, for example, and perhaps help them acquire an NFL team. Imagine me as the French Ed Roski.
It’s the sort of low-pressure situation in which I generally thrive. And if the team tanks, and anyone complains, I already have the proper French response.
The Louvre is a very nice museum.
