As an Englishman living in Paris, I’m embarrassed to admit that the tiniest, unpatriotic scintilla of my being hoped England wouldn’t qualify for Euro 2016, which will be held in France next year. To add to the woefully unrealistic expectations – the inevitable gut-wrenching agony of going out in the quarter-finals to the Germans, the folly of tabloids fixating over broken metatarsals– you can add Anglo-Saxons urinating on your doorstep, and men in large numbers behaving disgracefully in your local voisinage (though let’s give English fans the benefit of the doubt that they’ll not start singing racist songs on the metro). Still, Roy’s boys have taken a maximum 15 points from five games played so far in qualifying, and only a complete and unprecedented collapse will stop them, so I fully expect to be there cheering on the Three Lions and pumping my fist from the terraces to the sounds of Dangerous by David Guetta next summer. You heard.
With all the sleaze coming out of Fifa these last couple of weeks, I hoped the other footballing administrative body based in Switzerland might deliver some good news. It didn’t. Instead Uefa announced on 10 June that its musical ambassador for Euro 2016 in France will be EDM star David Guetta. Not only does that mean he’ll write the official song for the tournament, but he’ll also shape its “musical identity”, from the in-stadium audio to global broadcasting sequences. He’ll also be throwing a giant free party at the Champ de Mars with the Eiffel Tower in the background the night before kick off. It all just makes you want to throw your hands up in the air and shout “pourquoi?”
Pourquoi indeed, when there are so many other talented musicians in France who you suspect would do a better job. How about Sebastien Tellier, a Gallic prodigy with the flair of Michel Platini himself? The hairy Frenchman might be regarded as something of a wild card, but given the responsibility of representing France in a tournament once before, he served up Divine for the Eurovision Song Contest, a chanson that is for my money the best entry the contest has fielded since Abba’s Waterloo. It didn’t win, but I like to think we were all winners that night.
Why not Daft Punk? They’re a universally adored duo, who transcend mere genre, and who would bring plenty of glitz to the opening ceremony and maybe Kanye West and Nile Rodgers as well, which rather trumps Nicki Minaj and the Script. Or if Daft Punk were busy then even Jean Michel Jarre could bring a decent light show. And how about Charlotte Gainsbourg, an internationally famous musician and actress with parents who are little short of French royalty? Her collaborations with Beck especially over the years have been quite extraordinary, unlike nearly all of Guetta’s collabs, which have a certain goût de fromage about them.
Uefa could have even been brave and opted for the sound of the banlieues, or at least got some French rappers involved, as a show of solidarity at a time when the nation could do with some unifying. Appointing someone like Maître Gims or Kery James – huge-selling Muslim rappers in France – would send a message that French cities don’t end at the Périphérique.
Finally why not appoint Stromae? He might be Belgian, but the boy is a genius, and he shifts more records in La France than anybody else. Guetta on the other hand feels like a very pedestrian choice, a man who makes Will.i.am look like a maverick. He might sell records but his Eurobeat formula is too safe, a little bit corporate, a lot disappointing. Worst of all, I’ve never met a Frenchman or a Frenchwoman who isn’t embarrassed by him. At least being English, we’ve only got our own fans to worry about.
