Is France one of the great nations of football? The question ignites the minds of all enthusiasts (real or false) and specialists (real or self-proclaimed) of the most popular sport in the world. Often they will answer the question in the negative. A starving record in club (only one European Cup) and very late in the national team (1998 and 2018), and popular enthusiasm much less intense than in Italy, the United Kingdom or Brazil. When we think and write about the history of football, we think more of South America, Germany, England, the Netherlands or, now, Spain. A book comes to put a little balm in the heart of the French aficionados. French football. Big and small stories strives to put our country and some of its illustrious citizens back on top of the podium.
Jules Rimet of course! First president of the world federation, inventor of the World Cup and who misses, within a few months, the Nobel Peace Prize as he had made this competition a pledge of rapprochement between peoples and civilizations. In his wake, Lucien Laurent, first scorer of the first match of the first World Cup on January 13, 1930 in Montevideo; then the stars Raymond Kopa and Roger Piantoni, Brigitte Bardot, herself, Robert Herbin, Yannick Noah, Bernard Tapie and so many others have registered their names, their exploits, their genius or their escapades in the great golden book of this French football. Everyone is entitled to their chapter, their ode, their claw or their hat trick.
This richly illustrated book refreshes memories. France is unwittingly at the origin of one of the greatest revolutions in this sport. The dispute between Belgian footballer Jean-Marc Bosman and his club FC Liège at the time of his transfer to the Dunkirk club sent the case to the Court of Justice of the European Communities. The ECJ issued a resounding judgment which made players “commodities like any other”. Therefore, it will no longer be possible to limit the number of athletes of the nationalities concerned in a team or a professional competition. Purchases of contracted players, severance payments, agent commissions and staggering player transfers were born. And football-business too …
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A cruise like no other
French football. Big and small stories also looks back on the great heroes of this sport: Zidane, Platini, Giresse, Just Fontaine, Rocheteau, Hidalgo, Aimé Jacquet and a few others. He also multiplies the stories out of age of these epics or little-known episodes of an almost century of football. Like this crossing of the oceans from Villefranche-sur-Mer to reach Uruguay in 1930. How to keep in shape and prepare for competition by turning in circles on a liner which, as the stops on this cruise go like the others, welcomed the Belgian, Romanian and then Brazilian delegations on board. The irruption of television – the first championship match broadcast on the ORTF was a Reims-Metz in 1956 -; the brothers Giuseppe and Benito Panini, little princes of this king sport; the emergence of women’s football; the throw-in of General de Gaulle in a Coupe de France final; how the chance of a play in the air deprived Angoulême of this final; the irruption of politicians … this book signed by Antoine Grenapin and Guillaume Paret, two journalists keen on sport and who have worked with the editorial staff of Point, is full of anecdotes and draws a little history of the metamorphoses of our country. Where we discover, for those who still doubted it, that sport and entertainment are the best benchmarks for the development of a people and a society.
–French football. Big and small stories by Antoine Grenapin and Guillaume Paret, Casa éditions, 191 pages, 26.95 euros.–
