That was the dismayed, slightly disbelieving, question posed by a fan of a Mexico team last night to the North Carolinian worker at the food stand getting him a beer and hot dog. We were at the Carolina Panthers stadium (actually named, of course, after a large financial institution, the Bank of America), and it… Read More »
With a rapidity uncharacteristic of the French state, the FFF racism scandal has already run it’s predictable course: from outrage to self-exoneration. Yesterday, the French minister of sport Chantal Jouanno announced that no laws had been broken and therefore no specific legal or administrative action needed to take place. The argument was that, while the… Read More »
The last few days have offered some new and crucial details in the story of racism at the French Football Federation. The initial reaction by those implicated, including Laurent Blanc, was to deny that they had said what Mediapart accused them of saying. But they rapidly backtracked, perhaps because they had realized that in fact… Read More »
The French Football Federation has issued a communiqué by Laurent Blanc in response to the allegations published last week by Mediapart about the existence of a plan to limit the numbers of “black and Arab” football players within the national youth system. It’s a rather strange statement. Blanc, who initially issued a blanket denial about… Read More »
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This afternoon the French blog Mediapart published a stunning report, based on several weeks of investigation, that argues that racist ideas have become normalized, indeed banalized, at the highest levels of the French Football Federation. You can read an English version of the report here. And I have published a piece in reaction the article… Read More »
It’s one of funnest and most satisfying sports within the sport of football: complaining about the tedious, predictable, if not nauseating commentary foisted on us by the networks. With barely disguised pleasure, we chat or tweet our criticisms of the uninvited guests who join our football watching party. We wonder: Have these guys ever watched… Read More »
I’ve been a good fan: sticking with the French through the decade since 1998, through ups and downs and waves of absurdity. I managed to get through the experience and the aftermath of the 2006 World Cup, though it did take writing an entire book about the history of French soccer to do so. I… Read More »
In the quaint Luxembourg stadium on Friday, in front of a hopeful banner that read “Lux 4, Fra 0,” the pitch welcomed Patrice Evra and Franck Ribéry back from their period of post-World Cup exile. The game itself was, to put it politely, not the most thrilling of match-ups — France is lucky to be… Read More »
The recent expulsion of the U-17 Haitian football team from Jamaica has generated controversy and protest in Haiti. The Haitian Football Federation has released an official report about the incident. You can read the original French report here. Myrtha Désulmé has produced an Engish translation of the report, and kindly allowed me to post it… Read More »
