The French delegation comprised Didier Deschamps and, in Hugo Lloris and Bacary Sagna, two of his most trusted lieutenants, and they had all arrived in style. The police had spared the trio a morning spent twiddling their thumbs in the gridlock on the Paris Périphérique by laying on a helicopter to fly them in from Clairefontaine, about 35 miles south of the capital. The journey to the Stade de France through hazy blue skies could not have taken longer than 20 minutes. The reinvention of this team has taken considerably longer.
Deschamps and his players were at the national stadium on Saturday performing media duties before the Euro 2016 final on Sunday night, the talk now all of the hosts following in the footsteps of Michel Platini’s winners in 1984 or the side, inspired by Zinédine Zidane, who had claimed the 1998 World Cup on home soil. City Hall in Paris is still liaising with the authorities over routes for the victory parade, considering whether the team’s open-top bus will edge down the Champs Élysées once again or, with preparations for Bastille Day already in place, is deflected instead down Avenue Foch or Avenue de la Grande-Armée towards the Arc de Triomphe. These are questions of logistics, not presumptuous planning, given the considerable threat posed by Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal must first be overcome.
Yet, regardless of whether or not this city erupts in celebration on Sunday night, this team have already gone some way towards restoring the image of French football. It was only in 2010 when the national squad, Lloris and Sagna among a quintet retained in the current party, were considered pariahs, a team condemned by a disgusted public back home for their tantrums in Knysna, Western Cape. That was the tournament when Nicolas Anelka reportedly called the coach Raymond Domenech a “son of a whore” among plenty of other colourful language at half-time in a defeat against Mexico, and when the captain Patrice Evra was embroiled in a blazing row with the fitness coach Robert Duverne at an open training session having earlier claimed there was a “traitor” in the squad’s midst relaying details to the press. The team doctor resigned in disgust and a diminished Domenech was left to read out a statement from the players confirming they had effectively gone on strike.
The infamous events in South Africa were revisited in Saint-Denis, if only to offer a contrast with the newfound spirit of unity and harmony that has eased the hosts through to this stage. “Knysna scarred French football,” Sagna said. “We all clearly made mistakes. We dragged the team’s reputation in this country down to its lowest point, and showed the watching world a very bad side of us. It has taken a lot of effort and plenty of hard work to repair our image after that. Six years on, we can lay it on the table. We can’t change the past, but we are trying hard to build for the future. We want to put a smile on people’s faces.”
For all the eccentricities of Fifa’s ranking system, France’s descent from contention into crisis can be charted in the numbers over the past decade: fourth when finishing as the runners-up at the World Cup in Germany, but 18th after the debacle in South Africa and regularly below 20 in the period since, for all that their lowest ebb, at No25, was presumably warped by two years of friendlies.
“We went through a footballing crisis in this country, but we’ve picked ourselves up,” Lloris said. “It wasn’t easy but, step by step, we’ve come out the other side. The French Football Federation deserve praise, as do the players and the coaches. It’s a process. You can’t have success overnight, as the Spanish and Germans have proved. You can’t buy experience at this level. It takes time to make an impression.”
France, spurred on by their prolific front three of Antoine Griezmann, Olivier Giroud and Dimitri Payet, have illuminated Euro 2016. The din from the Stade Vélodrome, when Germany were beaten in the most captivating contest of the tournament so far with even François Hollande unable to suppress his delight up in the stands, has pursued the team from the Bouches-du-Rhône back to Île-de-France. Blaise Matuidi tried to pretend he and his team-mates have been living in “a bubble” back at Clairefontaine “where all we ever get to see is trees” but there is no escaping the country has woken up to the fact silverware is so close.
The tricolores are being unfurled. The terrestrial television channel M6 expects a record 22.2m viewers to tune in. The finals may not have whipped up the same fervour across France as they would in other nations more obsessed with all things football but a nation still held in a state of emergency needed this.
Whether sport can truly speed a healing process is open to debate but, after the terrorist atrocities that left 130 dead in Paris and Saint-Denis in November last year, this country has yearned for a positive story.
The streets around the Stade de France, where three suicide bombers triggered their vests while the national team were playing Germany in a friendly, still bear the scars of those attacks. They have covered up the shrapnel damage above Gate H but, down in Impasse de la Cokerie, a pock-marked lamppost and broken glass on the verge betray a night of violence. The double security perimeters around the stadium, and body and bag searches before the final, are another legacy of those horrific events.
“The French people really needed to escape via this competition,” Lloris said. “Sport has this strength, this ability to unite people. That is what we are experiencing now. As a country we have had some very tough times over the last year, but that makes us even prouder to feel the entire French population behind us. To feel this happiness. We have an opportunity to make history.”
