While normal political life in France came to a halt over the past month, football became a continuation of politics by other means.
President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, both acutely aware that their own final match for the presidency is scheduled for 2002, are trying to appeal to the voter who sleeps inside every football fan. Mr Jospin announced that he would attend every match played by France, and the two leaders have tried to outdo each other with commentaries and expressions of support.
Mr Chirac started before the World Cup even began, dining with the French team, les Bleus, at their Clairefontaine training camp. The French president said he had "a wish, supported by a strong intuition, that I will present the Jules-Rimet Cup to the French team on July 12th."
The statement raised two small problems. Last year, Mr Chirac's "intuition" led him to dissolve the National Assembly nearly a year early, and his centre-right coalition was massacred at the polls. Second, the Jules-Rimet Cup ceased to be the World Cup trophy 28 years ago, when it was given permanently to Brazil for its third World Championship title.
But Mr Chirac was never one to be discouraged by a gaffe. As he left the France-Denmark match, he told French television in a confidential tone that he "would have liked very much to be a goal keeper." Mr Jospin didn't waste any time with the comeback. "Unlike Jacques Chirac, who would have liked to have been a goalkeeper, I was one," he said in his home district of Haute-Garonne the following day.
As the French team went from victory to victory, the politicians' race to be identified with it also gained momentum. "It was true happiness after total stress," President Chirac said after watching the France-Italy match with Michel Platini and Mr Jospin. "We played a superb match." Note the "we". Mr Jospin went even further, telling Europe 1 radio station that he was "a team captain, a coach-player, a mixture of [the French coach] Aime Jacquet and [the star midfielder] Zinedine Zidane."
"L'effet mondial" as it is called here, has lifted both Messieurs Chirac and Jospin to their highest ever approval ratings, 60 per cent for the President and 63 per cent for the Prime Minister. In the same radio interview, Mr Jospin drew a parallel between the change of mood in France and its World Cup performance.
"It seems to me there is, in this capacity of the French team. . .to surpass itself and go forward, a striking coincidence. . ." The French people, he continued, could be pleased that after a year with Jospin as coach, "Ca va mieux"
At a time when the racist National Front receives 15 per cent of French votes, and when France seems unable to integrate the minorities living in its violent suburbs, many have taken heart from the mixed backgrounds of its team.
"I salute the unity of a team representative of French diversity," Mr Jospin said. "When I see blacks and beurs [children of North African immigrants], with the French flag, singing the Marseillaise, I find that these are timely images." One sociologist suggested that a winning goal scored by Zinedine Zidane, a Marseillais of Algerian origin, would do more to improve life in the French banlieues (italics) than 10 years of government urban planning.
France's most ardent football fan may also be its biggest political loser. Mr Philippe Seguin, the leader of the Gaullist opposition, is watching all 64 World Cup matches while his newly formed coalition disintegrates. At a recent rally, Gaullist politicians refused to wear the World Cup jerseys they were given by supporters - on the grounds it might jinx the French team.