July 20, 2006
Red-Carding America
The Politics of the French Street during the World Cup
by Sarah Bernthal
Private Papers

In the past few weeks during the World Cup, while France experienced an uninterrupted string of victories until its final match against Italy , the atmosphere of Paris completely changed. On game nights, the streets have been deserted except for the enormous crowds outside every bar with a television screen. Phone companies offered services that would call you every time a goal was scored. The metros were swamped before and after every match with tens of thousands of people heading to the stadiums on the periphery of the city, where the games were shown on giant television screens.

One of these stadiums is located next to the Cité Universitaire, a few blocks away from where I live. Once or twice a week I witnessed rabid fans heading out to watch the games, waving (and sometimes wearing) French flags, as well as Algerian flags in honor of the team’s star player, a French Algerian. Fans of whatever team is opposing France usually show up with their respective national flags as well.

At exactly 11 p.m. the day of a win, the crowd would rush out of the stadium and into the street in front of my building. Fireworks went off, horns blared, traffic was stopped for kilometers in every direction, and drunken revelry ensued, sometimes interrupted by the riot police. The biggest (or at least the most vocal supporters) of the French team are the youth of the city. The students who were out protesting the CPE a few months ago have been out celebrating every French victory, with as much enthousiasm as they were pouring into the demonstrations which made international news for much of last spring.

With growing disillusionment and cynicism directed towards the French government, patriotic fervor and national unity can still find an outlet through soccer. “Zizou président”—a slogan expressing a desire for Zinédine Zidane to be made president, was shouted by the crowds after every win. I don’t think they were joking.

During the final game, when France lost to Italy after a truly spectacular foul which forced Zidane to leave the field during the final minutes of the match, the crowd pouring into the street in front of my building was no more subdued than usual. At one point a fight broke out, tear gas was sprayed, and the crowd was forced to disperse into the construction site of a new tramway that has been blocking the main street in our neighborhood for the better part of a year, causing some injuries and the arrival of a battalion of police cars and ambulances.

What’s more, the Fondation des Etats-Unis, where I live, has been on constant alert for anti-American sentiment generated by the World Cup. Most of the Americans who live in my building have been cheering for France with great enthusiasm. Every game is shown in the common area of our building, and afterwards, the Americans usually head out to celebrate with the French. On July 5th, when France was playing Portugal, one of the building directors told us there was a security alert from the American embassy, and that we were not to go outside on the terrace. What’s more, if we wanted to leave the building to go out into the city, we were to do so discreetly in small groups. The administrator told us specifically not to go out “with American flags draped around us” as we might have done the day before (the 4th of July).

As fans, we’d been ejected from the game — red-carded. When I went downstairs later to see what was going on, it seemed like no-one was being allowed to exit the building, and anyone who was trying to get in was being interrogated as to whether or not they actually lived there. I hung around to see what all the fuss was about. The administrator who was guarding the exit seemed to get really alarmed when people from the crowd shouted insults in the general direction of our building, such as “canaille” (general French term meaning scum). While being insulted by a few drunken soccer fans is not very pleasant, most of us who have been living in France for awhile have come to recognize that occasional animosity towards Americans is not a cause for panic. The atmosphere of adrenaline and general pandemonium brought on by the World Cup nevertheless offers some food for thought on European-American relations.

I cannot help but feel that as European countries are coming closer together, even, and perhaps especially during times of intense competition such as the World Cup, the divide between America and Europe continues to be immense. At a time when Portuguese, Brazilian, Italian, and German citizens who are living in Paris take pride in carrying their flags during the World Cup, the American Embassy feels that it is not safe for Americans to do the same. A girl from Germany told me, somewhat jokingly, that soccer is one of the only domains in which the United States is not “imperialistic” — and it’s true that Europe and Africa take pleasure in their superiority in this particular event.

On a daily basis, the frustration and anger that is sometimes directed at the United States is rarely focused on American expatriates, and generally, my interactions with the French, especially in the academic sphere, have been productive and enlightening — so much so, that on the rare occasions when people tell me that all Americans are arrogant imperialists, I feel as if I have been brought suddenly back to a reality I would have liked to ignore. The truth is, the display of the American flag does send a different message than do the flags of other countries; in some cases I have heard Americans criticized by the French for overzealously displaying their flags at every possible opportunity: on our houses, on our cars, etc. What most Americans see as an act of patriotism is often interpreted as an arrogant desire to impose our presence on the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, much of the criticism directed towards America fails to focus on the way in which we use our power, but simply takes umbrage that we have it. It doesn’t bother me when I am abroad and people question or criticize American policies or the war in Iraq : after all, Americans do that too. What I find irrational is when Europeans criticize us for being the world’s super-power, and imply that there is something uniquely sinister in that fact alone.

Sarah Bernthal is an American student in Paris where she is completing her master's degree with New York University.