Football in France: A Cultural History

Description

France's performance in the 2002 World Cup brought back painful memories of a time when France was a weak contender in world and European football - a time when national or club teams rarely won, and the French were renowned for having little interest in the game. Today, football plays a unique role in French society. French players and coaches are highly sought after abroad and the national team has chalked up significant recent victories, including a World Cup and European Championship. This book is the first in English to examine the extraordinary cultural, economic, and political history behind French football's development throughout the twentieth century and up to the present day. It focuses on the past twenty years and concludes with a discussion of the fallout from the World Cup 2002. Imported from Britain by the middle classes in the late nineteenth century, football entered French national consciousness between the wars. As with everywhere else in Europe, the game helped to unite communities and forge new social identities. Although the State has generously supported youth coaching, the evolution of the professional sport has been slow due to tight community control, high taxes and lack of income from paying spectators. In a bid to compete successfully in Europe, the owners of France's big city clubs are seeking to commercialize the game, despite the resistance of central and local authorities. Hare traces the gradual evolution of traditional French football values and explores the impact of new and controversial business practices. Have French football's influential club chairmen sold out to business values and television? Why has the national team been so successful when club teams have not? How are top clubs being re-branded to catch a national and international audience of consumers? What role does the modern supporter play, and what are the links between businessmen, politics and the commercialization of the sport? What is peculiarly French about French football, and what does football tell us about France? Hare also pays specific attention to issues relating to race and racism. He looks at racist attitudes among fans, and considers how the multi-cultural and multi-racial population of France is reflected in the national football team. This book not only provides a fascinating cultural history of French football, but also an engrossing account of how national identity and community values are being transformed and reshaped in the global marketplace.

Geoff Hare Retired Senior Lecturer in French,University of Newcastle upon Tyne

'What has been lacking is the understanding of the culture of the game in France ... Geoff Hare's well-informed study fills that knowledge gap to perfection.' Four Four Two 'The aim of Football in France is to show how what was for many years an essentially community and voluntary activity is now threatened by a tough looking combination of big business, satellite tv and the European Parliament ... the big issues are thought provokingly compared with the situation in Britain.' Soccer History 'Provides an account of how national identity and community values are being transformed and reshaped in the global marketplace, and there are undoubted lessons to be learned by other nations, and cultures, if France's on-field success is a genuine aspiration.' Programme Monthly & Football Collectable 'Hare's book has a leavening of humour, with some splendid vignettes of the great personalities...The great ideological conflicts that have marked French history are inscribed into the history of its football culture, as Hare's book shows so well.' Saturday's Guardian 'The aim of Football in France is to show how what was for many years an essentially community and voluntary activity is now threatened by a tough looking combination of big business, satellite tv and the European Parliment...the big issues are thought provokingly compared with the situation in Britain.' Soccer History 'Not only does Hare's wide-ranging study cover considerable ground without ver losing sight of its main focus on values and identities, it also lays the foundations for, and points the way to, future scholarly study of the social and cultural impact of soccer in modern France.' H-France 'As convincing in its analysis of French football as a constantly evolving sporting practice as it is in its interrogation of the game as a periodically reconfigured metaphor for national self-belief, Hare's authoritative history deserves to be widely read.' Philip Dine, National University of Ireland in French Studies, LIX.1, 2005 'This is a work of impressive erudtion, informed by scholarly rigor, wide reading, an intimate understanding of 'the beautiful game,' and an obvious love for it.' Rosalie A Vermette, The French Review (Vol 78) 'Geoff Hare's book is, to my knowledge, the first and only book in English on the subject. In over two hundred pages, the author gives Anglo-Saxon readers an excellent and concise introduction to the most popular spectator in France. Geoff Hare has had the good idea to compare football in France and in England, thus enabling his English readership (probably more familiar with football in their own country) to get a clearer picture of the major differences in attitude toward sport in general and football in particular in the two countries.' Jean-Marc Lecaude, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand Journal of French Studies (Vol 26, No 2, 2005)