The rebirth of Les Bleus

FRENCH renaissance? More like a French revolution. Zinedine Zidane reborn? More like the second coming.

In the space of little more than a week, France have turned their World Cup upside down and inside out, with the result that they go into tonight’s Munich semi-final against Portugal as both the popular and the bookies’ favourites to progress to the final.

And that could be their biggest problem: the ugly duckling must readjust to life as a swan, the underdog has to cope with suddenly being cock of the walk. However, you suspect that only a relapse as dramatic as their resurrection will stop France from being in Berlin for Sunday’s final showdown.

To what can their stunning transformation be attributed? Hardly to manager Raymond Domenech who, although entitled to bask in the unfamiliar warmth of what we can only call a frontlash, still cuts a somewhat less than inspirational figure in the technical area.

To the players? Well, yes, of course. Consider Frank Ribery, the king-in-waiting of French football, who laboured in vain to live up to the hype at this World Cup until that breakthrough goal against Spain allowed the confidence to flood in. Then there’s the resurgent form of established figures like Patrick Vieira and Claude Makelele and, of course, the almost mystical reappearance of the Zizou the whole world knows and loves.

But there has to have been something else which helped restore to the French that unity of purpose and sense of mission which was so conspicuously absent from their World Cup qualifying campaign through to the group stages of these finals.

And it can’t have been the shrill whine of criticism — that’s a soundtrack which has been all too familiar in the French ears, from the embarrassment of the 2002 World Cup in Japan and Korea, through their quarter-final departure from Euro 2004, to the stuttering, goal-shy start they made to the qualifiers for this one. (Think of Ireland virtually playing them off the park in Paris in October 2004 — and weep).

No, there has to have been something else, perhaps outside the French camp, which provoked such a stirring reaction within it.

It’s interesting to note, for example, that the right-wing French politician and 2007 Presidential candidate, Jean Marie Le Pen, chose the eve of the game against Spain — when virtually the whole world was predicting an ignominious French exit — to make one of his ugly little opportunistic interventions, suggesting that Domenech had erred, not in any tactical or leadership sense, but rather by bringing too many ‘players of colour’ to this World Cup.

Then, when the team coach arrived at the ground for the game itself, they were greeted by a large body of Spanish fans doing monkey chants. And, on top of that, Thierry Henry and his comrades would have been keenly aware of the well-publicised racist slur uttered by Spanish coach Luis Aragones last year — and for which he was fined a derisory sum. In the light of all that, it can hardly be coincidence that one of the most indelible images to emerge from this World Cup is of Patrick Vieira, a finger raised to his lips, putting Aragones back in his box as the manager railed against the dying of the light.

The day after France had doused the Spanish flame, Lilian Thuram, the country’s most capped player, finally responded in his usual quietly forceful way to the poison of Le Pen.

“What can I say about Monsieur Le Pen?” he mused. “Clearly, he is unaware that there are Frenchmen who are black, Frenchmen who are white, Frenchmen who are brown. I think that reflects particularly badly on a man who has aspirations to be president of France but yet clearly doesn’t know anything about French history or society.

“That’s pretty serious. He’s the type of person who’d turn on the television and see the American basketball team and wonder: ‘Hold on, there are black people playing for America?

“When we take to the field, we do so as Frenchmen. All of us. When people were celebrating our win, they were celebrating us as Frenchmen, not black men or white men.

“I’ve just got one thing to say to Jean Marie Le Pen. The French team are all very, very proud to be French. If he’s got a problem with us, that’s down to him.

“So Vive la France, but the true France. Not the France he wants.”

Stirring stuff. But as they prepare for tonight’s game in Munich, this French team have done more than simply restore their own pride, they have helped elevate the whole competition by providing it with one of its great romantic storylines — that of the fallen heroes who get back on their feet and are, now, once again on the brink of becoming champions.

But, first they have to get past a Portuguese side which surely must deliver more than the limp, unimaginative display which edged them past England.

An early French goal tonight would be just the thing to galvanise Portugal and open up the game. The influential Deco is back for a start, and though his legs are hardly up to 90 minutes, let alone 120, anymore, Figo still has class.

But he is not the old master on whom the eyes of the world will be fixed tonight. Yesterday, the Portuguese full-back Miguel admitted that there was no obvious was to stop the player who destroyed Brazil. “All we can hope is that he has a bad day at the office,” he said.