Just for kicks: Zizou, France and the genesis of a football revolution
The 1990s in France was a very different time. The country was racked by racial tension. With far-right politicians such as Jean-Marie le Pen stoking the fire, the question on everyone’s mind was a complex one: What does it mean to be French?
The 1990s in France was a very different time. The country was racked by racial tension. With far-right politicians such as Jean-Marie le Pen stoking the fire, the question on everyone’s mind was a complex one: What does it mean to be French?
After World War 2, France was in shambles. So it recruited labourers from former colonies, mainly north and central Africa, to help rebuild the country. Then, around 20 years later, when it experienced an economic boom, it brought in even more to scale up. These two moments of influx willy-nilly combined to make France one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Europe. But it was a diversity not everyone was comfortable with. The murmurs grew louder, and by the mid-90s, the tense social interactions between the races escalated.
It was against this backdrop that a team made up of players of Algerian, New Caledonian, Caribbean, Senegalese, Ghanaian, Armenian and Argentine heritage united a nation like never before. Four members of France’s 1998 squad were born outside of its borders – the second-most a World Cup-winning squad has had after Italy, which had seven in 1934. Multiple others in the team either grew up overseas or were second-generation immigrants. And the sheer joy of their unlikely success made the question raised earlier seem irrelevant. What did it mean to be French? The answer now became relatively simpler. World champions.
How it began
To understand how France got to this point, one has to go back. After the success of the Michel Platini-led teams in the 1980s – they reached the World Cup semi-finals in 1982 and 1986, and won the European Cup in 1984 – French football experienced a downturn of epic proportions. To counter that, the Fédération Française de Football created a network of academies nationwide to nurture young talent. By the mid-1990s, some of those from these centres started to come through.
But having failed to qualify for the previous two World Cups, the pressure on the French squad in the build-up to 1998 – a tournament the country was hosting – was immense. Aime Jacquet took over as coach in January 1994, after their failure to reach the World Cup in USA, and handed a young Zinedine Zidane his debut that August.
The immediate results weren’t anywhere near impressive. The team failed to win a single match at Le Tournoi in 1997, finishing behind England and Brazil on home soil; went win-less in consecutive friendlies against Norway, Russia and Sweden later in the same year; and hadn’t won a single match by more than one goal since Didier Deschamps and Ibrahim Ba secured a 2-0 victory in Portugal in January 1997. Ninety-two per cent of France wanted Jacquet sacked in a poll conducted by national television in April 1998.
Favourites for the World Cup on home soil? Not even close.
Zidane, a second-generation Algerian immigrant, had always been touchy about his roots. He had a temper, too. But such was his quality that his team mates and Jacquet knew they had to build the side around the midfielder with a silken touch and an incredible vision. If they wanted to get out of the rut, he had to shine. If they had to level up, he needed to make magic.
“What he can do with his feet, some people can’t even do with their hands,” said Thierry Henry in the BBC documentary France: Black, White and Blue. “He was just magical. Sometimes when he plays with the ball, it seems like he’s dancing.”
While Zidane was allowed to do his thing, Jacquet unveiled a tactical revolution that has changed the game since. Playing without wingers, and with a target man in Stephane Gui’varch, whose job was simply to hold the ball up, the main attack came from the midfield.
They also focused on a two-tier midfield, a separation of attacking and defensive midfielders, which almost every team around the world has since adopted. When the tactics worked, it gave them fluidity. With two attacking midfielders shuttling between attack and midfield, and the full-backs making runs of their own, they could make things very tricky for the opposition.
For these tactics to succeed, they needed versatile midfielders, and France found them in Patrick Vieira, Deschamps (the current coach), Robert Pires, Emmanuel Petit, and Christian Karembeu, among others. It was a delightful mix of skill and toughness. They set up in front of a world-class defence made up of Frank LeBoeuf, Marcel Desailly, and Laurent Blanc, and Lilian Thuram and Bixente Lizarazu rank down the flanks, with Fabien Barthez in goal.
It showed in the numbers.
Two goals was all France conceded in the 1998 tournament – a record for a champion side until then, equalled by Italy in 2006 and Spain in 2010. On their way to the title, with Zidane inevitably scoring twice, France showed diversity is rather a strength if embraced in the right spirit can make you so much greater than the sum of parts.
And that tradition continued in their 2018 world champion team, which made a bright start in Qatar on Tuesday in the quest for a third crown.
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