Did Emmanuel Macron Score a Self Goal at the FIFA Finale?

When the Les Bleus (the French Football Team) played against Morocco in the recently concluded FIFA World Cup semifinal match in Qatar, snide remarks of an 'All African Derby' were made. Indeed, 19 members of the 23 member French football squad belonged to immigrant ethnicities. This is a stunning over-indexation for the immigrant populace that only makes up 9.1% of the total French population.

It's not just the likes of the rising star, Kylian Mbappe (Algerian/Cameroonian descent) but even the continental 'Whites' like the legendary, Michel Platini (Italian descent) and Raymond Kopa (Polish descent) that exemplify the multiculturality, that besets the Les Bleus.

But immigration and the accompanying curse of racism is a sensitive and divisive topic in the cauldron of France. The conflation of immigration and religion to the ensuing societal unrest, violence and worse, terrorism, is deep rooted. Many like the 'Devil of the Republic' i.e., Jean-Marie Le Pen, with his National Front party have contributed to this dissonance – from downplaying the Holocaust, calling fellow-Presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy a 'foreigner' (of Hungarian and Greek Jewish ancestry) to even complaining that the French Football Team had too many non-white players!

Today it is his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who has taken over the principal job of stoking nativist, anti-immigration, and unapologetically racist agenda. The stunning rise of the rightwing narrative hasn't gone unnoticed and many amongst the centrist position like current President Emmanuel Macron are often credibly accused of peddling and appropriating populist rightwing passions and seizing any opportunity to spotlight their own political appeal and acceptance.

France's superlative performance as the runners-up in the football World Cup was one such opportunity for Macron to usurp, and questions abound about the brazen overkill of his 'political nationalism' (stealing the thunder of rival parties nationalistic positioning).

While it is perfectly appropriate for national leaders to wish, goad and spur the national teams onto global stage and even in the playing fields, the fine line of differentiating between dignified support as behooves a restrained 'Statesman' from that of an over-the-top, theatrical and overzealous involvement that proximate a professional coach, is obvious. In moments of glory, or conversely of heartbreak (as was the case of France, after the final match), players want that moment for only their 'near and dear' ones, teammates or simply by themselves, and certainly not to misused as a convenient photo-op, least of all by political leaders.

However, in times of competitive nationalism, sports events often offer the most resonating and visible platforms, certainly the most watched sports event in the world ever, was too much for Emmanuel Macron to give a miss. He didn't, and was all over the French players in defeat, even if they looked understandably disinterested, inconsolable, and even unresponsive.

The quintessential politician in Emmanuel Macron ensured that he spent a disproportionately longer time with the failed hero of the day i.e., Kylian Mbappe, as only a politician knows the preference of the specific person, corner, and angle in a crowd. Widely sniggered as the 'President of the rich', he realised the relative futility of investing extra time with the likes of Eduardo Camavinga, Aurelien Tchouameni, William Saliba etc., who are years younger than even Kylian Mbappe, thus logically expected to serve the French side perhaps even longer, but do not have the current 'star' power, yet – the importance of the 'composition of the frame' was not lost on Emmanuel Macron.

An opposition Member of French Parliament called out Macron's attempted politicisation when he said, "It was a bit disturbing to see him stuck like glue to Mbappe", especially when the distraught Mbappe showed no interest in striking a conversation or even acknowledging the President of France, at that moment!

A very personal moment of loss was seemingly milked, condescendingly. From the immediacy of the post-match heartbreak on the football field, to the presentation ceremony to even the dressing room, Macron kept his animated, tactile, and incessant spiel going on and on, as if this was what the French players sought, the most. A TV channel slammed him as the '12th man' throughout the evening.

As one person slammed Macron on the social media, "Mbappe pulling away from Macron as he tried to console him and then trying to take the medal from his hands rather than allowing Macron to put it on him is a VIBE" – but the determined politician who was acting more like an excitable diva, was basically baiting for political brownie-points, regardless.

The fact that France stares at a crippling energy crisis, rising inflation, employment issues and a looming pension reform plan next month – public distractions can be invaluable. Even if such a distraction comes at the cost of reneging on one's own plea to "not politicise" sports events, as Macron had stated after awkward questions on Qatar's questionable record of human rights and climate impact, linked to the event.

Befittingly to himself, his attempts at a rather cavalier and stirring speech that he gave in the dressing room after the match was released on his twitter feed. Macron stitched his personal leadership glory with France's loss, seamlessly.

Back home in France, the real issues of racism and debate on nationalism are far more complex than can be solved by political photo-ops. Tellingly, the Ballon d'Or winner of 2022, Karim Benzema, who was selected for Les Bleus but subsequently ruled out with a thigh injury (though could have returned to the line-up after having recovered), had rejected Macron's invitation to board his private jet for the final match.

Karim Benzema has Algerian parentage (like the French legend, Zinedine Zidane) and had infamously refused to sing the French national anthem 'La Marseillaise', earlier, the riots in France that followed the semifinal match of France versus Morocco, exemplified the underlying societal tensions (especially with the Maghrebian ethnicity) and the testy notions of 'nationalism'.

Ironically, it was in 2018 that Macron had famously said after the French team won the World Cup, "There are two very difficult jobs in France, President and national football coach, because there are 60 million French people who think they would do the job better than the person in charge".

Clearly in 2022, the thoroughbred politician Emmanuel Macron did not want to take a chance and decided to wear both the hats of the President and the National Football Coach, simultaneously. The optics made for awkward Presidential enthusiasm that crossed the fine line of necessary leadership to that of sheer event management and consequently, photo-op glory, that afflicts so many politicians.

Lt General. BHOPINDER SINGH (Retd), is the Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. Views expressed are the writer's own.