SOCCER: FRANCE FOOTBALL CRISIS: LAURENT BLANC'S future as manager of France's national football team looked increasingly uncertain yesterday after a second of his former team-mates suggested the furore over ethnic quotas had made his position untenable.
Two inquiries are being conducted into allegations that senior figures at the French Football Federation (FFF), including Blanc, discussed introducing quotas for black and Arab players in youth training programmes.
Blanc has said he is “outraged” by the allegations of racism and insists the meetings were about finding ways to avoid players with dual nationality declaring for other countries after being brought through France’s elite training centres.
The controversy has shook French football and set former team-mates from the 1998 World Cup-winning side against one another. Yesterday, former captain Patrick Vieira joined Lilian Thuram – both of whom played alongside Blanc – in denouncing the federation’s “scandalous” behaviour.
“I’m shocked. I would never have imagined that the directors of football in our country could, within the federation, have such conversations about the French team. Never,” Vieira said in an interview with Le Monde.
According to the investigative website Mediapart, which published transcripts of FFF meetings, Blanc allegedly backed the idea of a change in youth selection criteria to favour players with “our culture, our history”. The transcript quoted Blanc saying: “The Spanish, they say: ‘We don’t have a problem. We have no blacks’.”
Vieira said he had a good relationship with Blanc and did not believe he was racist, “but I’m surprised by the extent of his comments”.
“It’s not for me to say who should leave, but I would find it hard to understand how the directors who were present at the meeting could remain in their positions,” he said. “People can say what they want, but nobody was trapped at this meeting. Nobody was forced to say these things, but still they said them – it’s a fact. That’s what is shocking.”
Earlier this week, Thuram called the row “a real scandal” and said Blanc’s apology was insufficient. However, another member of the 1998 team, Christophe Dugarry, gave his support to Blanc and criticised Thuram for acting like “a judge on the Supreme Court”.
“I always have the impression that he wants to give lessons to everyone on how they should behave by saying so-and-so has to do this and not that,” he said of Thuram.
Dugarry said he was worried the affair could cost Blanc his job. “I think we have to remember what French football was like over these last four years (under Blanc’s predecessor, Raymond Domemech).”
Two current players, Karim Benzema and Alou Diarra, also defended the manager. Benzema, who is of French-Algerian heritage, said: “It’s a scandal, you have to admit it.” However, he did not believe Blanc was racist. “Laurent Blanc is not racist,” Diarra, the current captain, told French television. “In his remarks, I see nothing racist. I see a frustrated coach because the number of players he has to select is limited.”
Mohamed Belkacemi, the FFF’s chief community officer, admitted to taping the meeting referred to by Mediapart but said he had passed the recording on to senior members of the organisation last November, and not to the media.
Separate inquiries by the federation and the sports ministry are expected to conclude next week.
