In France, as in most countries, football is the number-one team sport, and in the late 1990s French football was riding the crest of a wave. Having won the World Cup for the first time in 1998 in front of their home crowd, in 2000 the French national team became the first ever side to add a European Championships title to the world crown.Up until 1998, most of France's footballing successes had taken place off the pitch through innovators such as Jules Rimet, who created the World Cup in 1930, and Henri Delauney, who conceived the European Championships thirty years later. It was not until 1984, when Michel Platini's cavalier side lifted the European Championships cup, that the French were able to translate their influence in the corridors of power onto the pitch. It was only fitting, therefore, that Platini was chosen as president of his country's bid to host the World Cup for the second time in 1998. Having won the right to stage it, the French went on to clinch the tournament, though the final against Brazil, the pre-tournament favourites and defending champions, proved an anti-climax. However, the result was all that mattered to the French, and a million people piled onto the streets of Paris for the biggest street party since the end of World War II. The impact of the victory extended beyond the world of football. Of the 32 sides that made it to the finals, France's was the most diverse ethnically, with half of the squad's 22 players of foreign extraction, including their star player Zinedine Zidane, affectionately known as Zizou. For the first time, the national team really reflected the racial diversity of modern French society. Before the tournament Jean-Marie Le Pen's right-wing Front National party had called for a ban on players of foreign extraction playing for France, but the heroics of Zidane, Marcel Desailly and Lillian Thuram, among others caused him to backtrack sharply. Furthermore, the French president, Jacques Chirac, chose his Bastille Day conference, two days after the French triumph, as a political platform to denounce the Front National's policies of racial discrimination and to praise France's "tricolour and multi-colour" World Cup win. Buoyed by their success, France stormed through the 2000 European Championships in style, and set their sights on the 2002 World Cup, hosted jointly by South Korea and Japan. They were widely tipped as favourites, and certainly expected to make it to the finals. But it was not to be. France were not only eliminated in the first round, but didn't even score a single goal. The reasons for such an ignominious defeat have been the subject of endless debate in the French media ever since. Some attribute it to arrogance or, at least, overconfidence. Others cite the fact that so many of the international squad – snapped up by Europe's richest clubs in the aftermath of the 1998 World Cup – now play their club football outside France, mainly in England, Italy and Spain. Whatever the truth, everyone's eyes are on the controversial new coach Jacques Santini to see if he can revive the team sufficiently to carry it through the qualifying rounds of the 2004 European Championships. The drain of talent out of France and the drubbing the team received in the World Cup does not seem to have harmed the domestic game, however. Average attendances are on the rise, almost all clubs now have sound financial backing, and the biggest clubs, such as AS Monaco, Marseille and Paris St-Germain (PSG), have all done well in European competition in recent years. More importantly, the infrastructure of French football has never been in better shape. The main club grounds underwent major reconstruction for the 1998 World Cup – some for the first time in sixty years – and Paris now boasts the magnificent Stade de France. In addition, the French football federation has invested heavily in a national football institute for outstanding young players, based in Clairefontaine, near Paris, which is the envy of the footballing world.
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