Les Bleus (round and oval) and high jinks at high altitude.
As regular visitors to The Mag may well be aware, I am a British ex-pat living in rural SW France. I live in a small hamlet of around 20 families in the Charente Departement – about an hour and a half inland from Bordeaux.
When we bought our house 22 years ago, I remember the locals being quite bemused as to why so many Brits in particular were upping sticks and relocating to the French equivalent of the “boonies”. It didn’t stop them from welcoming us with open arms, though. I can honestly say that during those 22 years we have never been made to feel unwelcome or outsiders – except, perhaps, under certain specific circumstances.
During the rugby 6 nations.
In our area, every man, woman and child lives and breathes rugby. Everyone is the enemy but the arch enemy are “Les Anglais”. If France beat no one else, it has to be us.
When the 6 Nations is on, wherever you are, as soon as any random waiter, diner, shop assistant notices you’re English then you’re in for running commentary if England are losing – doesn’t matter who to but preferably to the French.
Oddly, that level of competitive paranoia doesn’t seem to cross over into football. The French like their footie and support “Les Bleus” but the same fervour isn’t there – especially not among the women folk who adore their rugby heroes. Driving around the area where I live, for example, you would hardly know the World Cup was on.
Sure enough, national supermarket chains have “Les Bleus” promotional goods and the occasional bar in the towns shows the games live but there isn’t anything like the level of interest I remember back in England. My two local towns are Jarnac (3 miles) and Cognac (7 miles). In driving to both yesterday, I noticed two tricolors flying on the way to Jarnac and none at all on the way to Cognac. None actually in either town.
Now that France have lined up their semi final place, I expect those numbers to start increasing – the locals do like to back a winner. Not like us Brits insisting “It’s coming home” after squeaking past a motley collection of also-rans in the qualifying competition. The French, in our area at least, like to hang on a bit and ensure they don’t go off half “Coq” and look foolish.
This strange attitude even extends to their view and treatment of my own patriotism. Being a daft Brit, as soon as any football or rugby competition kicks off I run up a St George’s flag at the bottom of the garden, overlooking one of the roads into the village.
Photo by Wor Lass via The Mag
When it’s been football, there’s never been a problem, but it’s been a different kettle of poissons where the rugby’s concerned. My England rugby flag, with the rose in the corner, has been kidnapped twice now and also decorated with black bin liners, dead roses or even both!
Photo by Wor Lass via The Mag
It’s good natured stuff, and it’s patently obvious who’s behind it, and we all have a bit of a laugh about it – but if they ever put a flag up they’ll use a Manitou so they can put it somewhere I can’t reach!
Fortunately for them, France are annoyingly in the ascendancy in both forms of the game just now. In the World Cup, they have shown that they can win in different ways and have moved into the semi finals almost untroubled. However, their smug predictions of a drubbing for our boys at the Azteca didn’t work out and maybe a tiny seed of doubt has been sown? Not to worry though, if we squeak past Norway we have no chance against Messi’s Marauders – according to my flagnapping neighbour, Daniel.
But what a game that was. Probably the best World Cup game I’ve ever watched in terms of sheer drama and excitement. We had 11 solid performers in that game (even Spence earned some sort of redemption) but none more so than Jude Bellingham. He’s grown in stature during this tournament and even my neighbours have started to ask about him. Long may he continue to take the strain from our ageing captain.
After all that talk about the effects of high altitude, our boys simply stood firm and weathered everything the Mexicans could muster. It felt so good to silence a crowd that started the “Olés” before the first minute was up.
I hate to say it though, but in common with most observers, I see the Cup being the French to lose. They have a team of such depth, pace and skill and players who already know how to win that they stand above all other opposition. The one hope would be Mbappé having a 90+ minute off day but then you have the likes Dembele, Olisé, Barcola, Doué etc waiting to take over the baton.
England have got as far as I thought they would and performed better (at times, anyway) than expected but our lack of pace in the centre of defence, an over reliance on St Harry for goals and the silly decisions made around the right back position, suggest that we may struggle to despatch a very resilient Norway and that, if we do, Daniel’s confidence in Messi and his mates may well be justified.
But hey, come on! I’m a Brit expat so:
It’s coming home, it’s coming home ……