Racism in multicultural football

The question increasingly being asked has made it onto the front page of Libération: “Is French football racist?” This comes a week after the Mediapartnews web site published revelations that the national coach, Laurent Blanc, and the national football federation directorate appeared to be seeking to “limit the number of French players of African and North African origin” by drawing up discriminatory quotas for bi-national players at training centres. The case, which shakes up the image of the 1998 world champion team of black-blanc-beur [beur = Arab], has become a political and social issue. “The controversy is justified,” writes Libération, publishing an appeal launched byneighborhood coaches denouncing “the denigration of blacks and Arabs by the French Football Federation.” “If the controversy has blown up like this, it’s because — beyond bringing in the symbol that is the national team of the most popular sport there is — it hits the nail on the head, right there where France is hurting: the failure of its integration model and the social and urban segregation in which millions of citizens of immigrant origin have been kept for three generations now.”