The war is based on the imbalance of forces

A few years ago, in the previous century, said the football World Cup. Now, one speaks of the world. A world in which neither the India nor China, nor the Japan exist. A world in which the United States remain pale extras. A world which ends in the European grand finale, very far from a globalization in which Europe tramples underfoot. In its disproportion, popular enthusiasm in part remains a mystery. How twenty-three players, reduced to 11 or 15 depending on coaching, can unleash the passions and emotions of an entire people Why is a penalty converted by Zidane comes happy howling Why the "on", in "it won" That is there in common between the human touch and a people whose purchasing power is stagnant None of this is despicable: decidedly, "call of the hero" is good, as wrote Bergson, one of the two sources of morality and religion.

As globalization, the world is a competition, but competitors are the nations. It should be noted that football is the activity of the clubs, the paradigm of the almost total mercenary. Transfers are subject to the law of the wild market: the value of a contract of employment is measured at the price at which it can be broken so that a transfer is possible. In the world, this is very different: the management of Domenech is not of the same nature as the management of a club. No need to retain players, because all want to play in the national team. With rare exception Deco, Brazilian Portuguese, at the request of Scolari , becoming a French player will never play in the team of Italy. The difficulty for Domenech was more to find a style for a team whose players are scattered in European clubs, while the Italians and the Germans almost all play in their national championship.

The world is a competition, but is not the war, not even in the order of the metaphor as economic war. Sport is an element in which the sense of belonging to a nation is not expressed by hatred, violence or massacre. Leftists are mistaken when they reduce people's enthusiasm to a narrow nationalism. The other night, Corcoran's, on the Grands Boulevards, I was at France-Portugal pressed on all sides by a warm crowd. For a long time, I had not heard "La Marseillaise" sung by so many young people. But when four Portuguese accompanied their own national anthem, they were not assaulted or late.

Soccer, it is not the war. You can bring in satisfied leftist ideologue, the flag, "La Marseillaise", the "go blue!", the words of victory and defeat, and all nationalist comments, football, this is not the war.

The war is based on the imbalance of forces. Each camp wants more tanks, more missiles, more bombers. To defeat the other. Football requires rules of balance. These rules are strengthened in a World Cup: clubs, kicked euros or dollars, can hire mercenaries to defeat the formal rules of the eleven against eleven. In the world, it must be French, Portuguese or Italian for belonging to the national team. In this world of mercenaries became a sporting competition, the world is an exception. And, although the business of advertisers, sponsors and media feeds in the collective interest to competition, it remains uncertain. The glorious uncertainty of the sport, is often written properly. Because the magic of the world, it is the uncertain. Eleven against eleven, with a referee and referees of key. The forces involved are in equilibrium, in principle. The balance of the National Championships is partly broken, not by the number of players but if variable budgets from one team to another. But even in these cases, the men, their sense of the team, the value of the collective can contradict the imbalance in financial reports. Lille birth and culture, I am the mastiffs with passion and I note that the budgets of the MTP and OM remain powerless against other values that remain human and sports. And will the LOSC in European Cup trample the PSG and OM in their scandals or internal conflicts. At the time T0 of the commitment, the time Tn who sees the referee whistle the end of the match, uncertainty remains. It is the size of the sport. Nothing is played in advance. People's joy would not be so great if everything was predictable. These are men who make the difference on a neutral ground. Because and this is another difference with the war no team chooses his land. Not ambush in a parade, step of relief that promotes a camp: the terrain is flat, the same for all. Only popular support may be different, if we play at home or outside. It remains, therefore, a history of men.

20 Hours, Sunday, nobody knew who would win. The game is an event as saying the Stoics: there once and for all. We never Redid the match, academe to ODS. It provokes sighs, cries, cries of joy, tensions in real time, at this particular time that the Greeks called "aiôn" time of the effects of surface. Bodies get agitated in the stage live a time of energy, fatigue, expenditure or exténuation. But the event is of another time: it is intangible, magical effect of the time lived by these bodies in motion which are never immune to the laws of physics.

It will always denounce excesses: some stupid dead, omnipresent, the extinction of any other information, exuberant excited. The exaltation of the "France who wins" is laughable, because this final is an "event", while globalization is an economic fact which is not the same temporality.

I think little about the mechanical effects on the morale of the French, consumption and growth. Only analogies can be exploited. A team of denigrated France is not without referring to the speech from the déclinologues. A team of almost triumphant France contradicts all pessimistic comments which predicted the worst old ("old nation") and trumpeted the consistency between the success of the Spanish athletes (the Nadal, Alonso or the winners of the Ukraine by four zero) and the dynamism of the Iberian economy.

Once more politicians had damaged in their comments or their presence in decisive matches. Ségolène Royal, who stated his disdain for the foot before the success of the team of France and hardly looked at the games of pool, wanted to be in Berlin "in the middle of the fans". While we screaming joy and expected the big day, he was, as always, take the place of someone else.