creek. Civilizations will collide, France will burn, and what will the world’s champions do about it?
Play soccer, make it an ordinary world cup semi final game.
They learned how to win them over.
Sometimes, you can actually use basic journalism rules — and follow the money. When telecoms giant Orange, one of the largest French companies and one of the main sponsors of the French Football Federation, announced this particular match, it didn’t seem like usual.
Their ads stated: Orange proudly supports Les Bleus But with one addition: “…and I wish the Atlas Lions good luck.”
Greetings from France, but I hope all French Moroccans are fine too.
There are matches that challenge balance, and there are matches that challenge an entire country.
Were there 55,000 Moroccans here in Qatar? more? Nobody knows for sure.
But I do know that the roof of the Bedouin house tent was about to be raised and sailed half a mile into the desert when eleven Atlas Lions came out to play their World Cup semi-finals. They overthrew 3 colonial powers (Belgium, Spain and Portugal) on their way here, and decided to overthrow the Big Boss himself as well. A half-section whistle blew when La Marseillaise was played, and above all a full storm full of fervor as soon as the match began.
– Didier Deschamps said: I want to see a football match.
And yes, that’s what the challenge looked like. The world champions were on their way to playing football, and they would have faced a ripped, injured and worn Morocco with the national team captain having as many caps (nine) as Deschamps has in the World Cup tournaments alone.
In a normal match, this is enough.
The champion team needs no more
France are the best in the world, even without the ailing duo of Upamecano and Rabiot, they have faster players (Dembele, Mbappe, Theo Hernandez, Koeman and Thuram off the bench) than any other World Cup team. They have Olivier Giroud’s forehead. They have Griezmann who can slide into a phone booth, dribble a back three and out again.
But regular matches don’t look like that, they don’t have that weight.
Prior to the regular matches, France had not gone off the rails in arguing about identity politics, it is a sport they dedicate themselves to the most during the World Cup, and it has now exploded.
“You can’t be French and support Morocco more than France,” said far-right politician Eric Zemour. His assistant Damien Rieu argued that it was no longer about football but about a “clash of civilisations”, a reference to political scientist Samuel Huntington’s theories on post-Cold War lines of conflict, particularly between the Christian West and Islam.
After the quarter-finals, the Moroccan and French flags can be seen side by side in celebration, which is a nightmare for this part of the ideological landscape. The night derailed by the France-Morocco match will be a political hard currency.
Here, President Macron sat with his guests.
Abdellatif Benazi, the rugby icon who played for the Moroccan national team but the World Cup finals for France. Mohamed El-Khatib is the son of a Moroccan factory worker, a well-known French cleaner and director. The newspapers interviewed the famous writer Leila Slimani, one of the most famous French writers, who happens to be the daughter of the former president of the Moroccan Football Federation.
regular match?
Walid Regragui – French and Moroccan – had crossed the line and started with a triple line at the back, and the strangeness was noticeable. It took a few seconds before they found the right form, and that was all the world champion team needed. When France won the World Cup for the first time, defender Lilian Thuram scored both of their goals in the semi-finals, when they won the second, defender Samuel Umtiti scored the only goal in the match, and after four minutes here it was time again.
Raphael Varane sprinted forward with the ball, finding Griezmann as he pushed Dawad Yamik wide, finishing with a cut one and two from Mbappe later, and left back Theo Hernandez kicking the goal to make it 1-0.
Same procedure as in the World Cup finals, Monsieur Deschamps?
Same procedure as every World Cup.
Throughout the first half, France were good at absorbing Morocco’s energy, and it was only the fine youngster Azzedine Onahi who made the game’s uncertain picture. Giroud grabbed the post and missed a half-open goal, Morocco’s only chance was at a corner kick when Al-Yamiq hit the post. But in the middle of the half, captain Romain Saïss gave up and came out with a bandaged thigh, and Morocco returned to the four-way defense line and found itself.
And after the break we might as well have gotten to know them.
They began to challenge France’s left wing with Hakimi Ziyech, pressed hard, replaced Amal Allah, and suddenly the faults appeared in France. Fofana didn’t have the all-encompassing presence of Adrien Rabiot, Dembele had the dull nights he sometimes had, and there wasn’t much on the bench to change match pictures with him.
But yeah, soccer is about identity in other ways too.
It was one of the biggest blows of Moroccan football when they applied for the World Cup standings in 1998 (they have applied for the World Cup five times now) without ever getting it. France got the World Cup and won the World Cup, and something happened. They’ve been the sweet losers in WC for a long time, they’ve played three semi-finals and lost all of them, but when they win, they keep winning. They have now won four consecutive semi-finals, without impressing too much in any of them. Varane is safe, Griezmann is the best in the world at what he does, Kylian Mbappe is Lionel Messi’s heir to the throne and Tchoameni is absolutely beautiful. and it’s enough.
While the far right worried that France would become North Africa, they went and became… Germany?
Morocco struggled, Morocco is the best ugly duckling in the World Cup, but it wasn’t enough. Azzedine Onahi is said to be earning $40,000 a month in Angers. Kylian Mbappe earned about the same amount in the time it took him to challenge six Moroccans in a sort of Messi raid into the box, getting the ball to substitute Randall Kolo Mwane. Mwani, born in Bondi like Mbappe, scored 2-0 on an open goal.
Emmanuel Macron smiled and applauded, and the bravest Atlas Lions collapsed onto the grass before facing the applause of their people.
This was definitely not a battle of civilizations, nor was it a direct red storm into the colonial power. It was a football match, a semi-final in the World Cup.
France wins these days.
