Thousands of people had gathered in the bars near the main Parisian avenue to celebrate, in the event of victory, a third world title for the Blues.
There were cheeks made up in blue, white, red, tricolor scarves, pennants and horns… But these are frozen and annoyed faces that suddenly deserted the crowded bars, a few minutes earlier, in the alleys adjacent to the Champs -Elysées where supporters of the Blues had come by the thousands on this Sunday of the World Cup final against Argentina. A young girl hides her face in a flag, while a boy dumps his in a trash can. To complete the sad picture, a cold rain begins to fall.
After a furious and intense final, where everyone thought they saw this third star return to the France team, an acute disappointment spills over the most famous avenue in the country. “I’m crying inside of me…” loose Youssef, 31, dejected, a tricolor planted in his furry scarlet hood. “A victory would have delighted us”, continues this server from an adjoining palace, not really a football aficionado but always at the rendezvous of the big matches, “just to vibrate at the same time as the others”.
Fan zone based on smartphones
“It’s football, it’s like that, you can’t win all the time”, consoles himself Yassine, 22, who came on purpose with his band of friends to the Champs in the hope of a triumph, after mourning the defeat of his other favorite team, Morocco, on Saturday. “The game was good, I like games like that. There were goals opposite, then France woke up,” analyzes this electrician who never stopped fidgeting with stress for one hundred and twenty minutes. But this football enthusiast puts it into perspective: “Argentina is a team that I like too. Messi, he deserves his World Cup!”
After a long wandering, his small group, although arriving early, had finally found a piece of screen in a Lebanese boui-boui on Washington Street. Because places were expensive this Sunday. “Everything is shielded, they should have put a giant screen”, regrets a young man wrapped up from head to toe, as if on an arctic expedition. The jam-packed pubs spill out into the freezing cold of the street. Here it is “100 euros, the table and the shisha”. The low, “20 euros entry” to follow the match, warm, on a giant screen. So we improvise tables on the roofs of cars, where kebabs and pints of beer sit enthroned. And above all, a mini fan zone, outside, based on smartphones. The fingers are frozen, but the enthusiasm and the hope intact. With a major fear: that of the delay in retransmission. “How many minutes are you on the bigo? 38?» asks a kid hiding behind his cap. “Yeah same!”, another reassures him.
“Farewell to the boycott!”
Crossed in an alley, Marie-Eva, 19, had come from Brittany to attend the final. This football player since childhood greets a “match full of surprises” and an “great atmosphere” despite this defeat on the wire. “Frankly, even if we lost, Mbappé’s match was incredible. I believed in it so much… He deserved it, it’s not fair!” can’t believe Marie-Laure, 22, of Cameroonian origin like the star striker, author of the hat-trick of the evening. “He’s my player, he saved the game!” gets carried away this neighborhood waitress.
On the avenue, the department stores have lowered their gates and, for the most part, barricaded their windows with large metal or wooden palisades. In the neighboring streets, dozens of CRS buses have been engulfed since the beginning of the afternoon: 2,750 police officers have been mobilized in the capital, according to the Paris police headquarters. Long before kick-off, we had heard a young woman, laughing, crushed against a metro window, say to her friend on her way to the Champs-Elysées: “Farewell to the boycott!” Ready to abandon her principles for the love of the game, she had nevertheless considered everything: “If we lose, we’ll say we weren’t there!”