Editorial. 2026 World Cup: a month of football… and political recovery!

Let’s go, Thursday June 11, for a little over a month of football, with the start of the 2026 World Cup, a month of sporting passion, of course, but also political. Let’s bet that the destiny of the Blues will, once again, transform politicians into supporters during the competition. And as recovery champions! Since the 1998 coronation, it’s always the same thing. When the Blues triumph, politicians commune around a team erected as a symbol of national unity. When they fail prematurely, players are vilified as traitors to the Nation.

In 1998, the epic of Zidane, Desailly, Thuram and the others was the emblem of a France “black-blanc-beur”synonymous with successful integration. In 2010, the bus strike and the sinking of Anelka and Domenech, this group “where immature bosses order around scared kids”, in the words of Roselyne Bachelot at the time, were the symbol of a fractured country.

In the first case, Chirac and Jospin pushed each other to arrive first in the locker room. In the second, Nicolas Sarkozy saw fit to comment on the insults of a player during a press conference in the company of his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev.

Football drives crazy those who govern us, and those who aspire to replace them. Emmanuel Macron has already made the pilgrimage to Clairefontaine, the training center, before the team flies to the United States. And we remember his omnipresence, a little uncomfortable, on the pitch in Doha, taking Kylian Mbappé in his arms after the lost 2022 final.

In terms of recycling, LFI is doing even better this year by marketing a Blues jersey printed with “Mélenchon 27”. For a month, the candidates will compete in imagination, and often in indecency, in the hope of pocketing some electoral benefits. Always in vain. The victory of 1998 did not prevent Jean-Marie Le Pen from reaching the second round in 2002, and the identity hysteria of the 2010 crisis did not block the road to the Élysée for a true football fan, François Hollande. If France gains its third star on July 19, this will in no way reduce the risk of seeing the far right win the Élysée in 2027.

It happens, however, that players get involved in politics, because they are also citizens, with the right to vote. Kylian Mbappé recently reiterated his fear of seeing the RN come to power. Even Zinedine Zidane broke her silence for the same reason in 2002. From Jean-Marie Le Pen to Jordan Bardella, this attitude continues to anger the far right. The RN requires players to be exemplary, but it wants them to be silent. As if he was rejecting, here too, the citizenship of young people largely from the suburbs.

Football is just a game that says nothing about the state of a country. But there are politicians whose reactions betray a vision of the world.