France, Football and Society
DAVID HAND
Manchester Metropolitan University
Bromberger, C., Football, la bagatelle la plus sérieuse du monde (Bayard,
1998), 137 pp., 80F., ISBN 2 227 13758 4.
Mignon, P., La Passion du football (Odile Jacob, 1998), 287 pp., 130F., ISBN 2
7831 06110.
Ravenel, L., La Géographie du football en France (PUF, 1998). 143 pp.. 98F.,
ISBN 2 13 049403 X.
Academic interest in football is a relatively recent phenomenon in France but one
which has undoubtedly been given fresh impetus by the double success of the
1998 World Cup finals. Despite disquiet in certain quarters about the ticket
allocation, the organisation and running of the finals by the French hosts were
generally praiseworthy, presented a largely positive image of France to the world
and offered, according to Dauncey and Hare, 'a statement of national political
and economic self-confidence'.1 Also, of course, the fact that the host nation was
the ultimate winner of the tournament helped raise even further the profile of
football in France and guaranteed its place of pre-eminence in the growth area of
academic enquiry that is popular culture. The three works under review were, for
sound commercial reasons, all published in the period immediately before the
World Cup finals. Two of the texts are written by established scholars
(Bromberger and Mignon) whilst the third signals the entry into the field of a new
researcher (Ravenel). All three demonstrate not only the burgeoning of interest in
football in French academic circles but also the increasing diversification of the
study itself. In this sense, the French are, if a little belatedly, following the same
trajectory as their British homologues. Focusing initially on the historical aspects
of the sport's development and then on its 'hooligan' problem.2 French academics
arc now studying football from a multiplicity of perspectives and the three authors
under consideration here, an ethnologist, a sociologist and a geographer, are
amongst the foremost examples of this new, diverse and welcome trend.
Professor of ethnology at Provence University, Christian Bromberger has applied
the rigorous methods of his discipline to the study of football supporters in
Marseille, Lens, Naples, Turin and Teheran. Football, la bagatelle la plus
sérieuse du monde repeats some information from the author's earlier,
ground-breaking Le Match de football1 but also usefully contains new
material, notably on Lens, and updated information on Marseille. Through
extensive fieldwork involving questionnaires, interviews, videos and
analyses of supporters' banners and chants, Bromberger seeks to
understand what makes a football match so captivating to watch and to
discuss. He concludes that the drama generated by what is essentially a
simple game arouses partisan passions which highlight the fundamental
issues of postmodern society: identity, gender and race. 'Telle est la leçon
surprenante que m'ont livrée des mois d'enquête passés debout dans les
tribunes', recounts Bromberger (p. 10) as he discovers that football is
'Une bagatelle pleine de sens, en somme' (p. 136). After dismissing in
chapter 1 those who fail to understand the full significance of football by
erroneously considering it variously as the opium of the masses, a
collective regression to savagery or the domain of only one social group,
Bromberger goes on to demonstrate, in the next two chapters, how
football reflects society's dominant values and structures. Of considerable
interest here is the exploration of the ways in which this sport is an arena for
the affirmation of national, regional and local identities. The well attested
rivalries between Marseille and Paris, and Lens and Lille are revisited but
with the added benefit of fresh data gathered from empirical fieldwork.
Similarly. French supporters' impressions of the style of play of their favourite
teams are recounted in an accessible way: Lensois, for instance, apparently
favour the virtues of solidarity, courage and hard work whilst Marseillais
see in their team's supposedly spectacular panache and virtuosity a
reflexion of their own beliefs about the identity of the city of Marseille itself.
Bromberger's fourth chapter presents the findings from his research into
football match crowds and has revealing things to say about the sociology
of spectators: French supporters are predominantly young (70 per cent
under 35) but France, despite some progress, still lags behind other
European countries in attracting women to football who constitute only 7 - 1 4
per cent of a typical crowd with those women who do attend finding
themselves submerged in a male-dominated culture;4 the 'working class' are
proportionally under represented, too, but the presence of supporters from
ethnic minorities varies from the negligible (Paris) to cases where the
percentage reflects that of the population of the city as a whole
(Marseille).
Turning to the second book under review. Patrick Mignon's LA Passion du
football covers similar ground to Bromberger's with its examination of the
origins of football and its universal appeal as well as with the assertion that 'le
match de football dit quelque chose d'essentiel sur les sociétés dans
lesquelles il prend place et renvoie à des enjeux qui dépassent le cadre du
match lui-même' (p. 15). Mignon is interested in the ways in which football
may be seen as an extension of society's structures whether these are social,
cultural, political or economic but his work differs from Bromberger's in certain
respects: the main country chosen to contrast with France here is not Italy but
England (although rather too much emphasis is placed on the 'hooligan'
question in the four chapters devoted to the English game); also the principal
case study in the analysis of French football culture is not Marseille but their
arch rivals Paris Saint-Germain; finally Mignon devotes more space to the
economic issues and the increasing commercialisation of football in France.
Football is clearly now ’un sport qui tend à devenir un vrai business' (p. 80)
as big firms seize the opportunities it offers for marketing and profit. This
movement, however, is not all one way. As Noel Le Graët, President of the
Football League noted in Le Monde (8 août 1998), 'Les grandes entreprises
sont de plus en plus nécessaires dans le football de haut niveau' as French
clubs are no longer allowed by law to receive local authority subsidies.
One of the biggest investors in football, as Mignon demonstrates, is
television the money from which is distributed equally amongst the clubs
and which now typically provides 25 per cent of their income in return for
broadcasting over 500 hours of football per year (a staggering increase on
the 10 hours per year of the mid-1970s). The transformation of football into a
commercialised form of show business has not, however, prevented other
more positive developments in the French game such as the gradual increase
in participation as spectators and players of women and people from ethnic
minorities. Indeed, the presence of ethnic minority players in the national team
— condemned by the extreme Right — has added fuel to the fires of the
debate over national identity. With remarkable prescience, Mignon noted:
'Dans un tel contexte, ce ne serait peut-être pas si mal de gagner une
Coupe du Monde, surtout avec des joueurs qui s'appellent Zidane,
Karembeu, Thuram' (p. 264). This theme was expounded at length and at
large when France's squad of blacks, blancs, beurs duly won the World Cup
with the national team being portrayed by Le Monde for instance, as 'cette
équipe multiethnique (...) le symbole de la diversité et de l'unité du pays' (18
juillet 1998) testifying once again to the validity of Mignon's affirmation that
football is not a world apart but a reflexion of the society in which it is played.
Finally, Loïc Ravenel's La Géographie du football en France is an extract
from his Avignon University thesis. As such, it is extensively referenced,
copiously illustrated with maps, charts and diagrams and divided into
intricately numbered sub-sections. The analysis itself is prompted by two
questions. Why do French cities — unlike their European counterparts — rarely,
if ever, have more than one top flight football team? For instance, London,
Birmingham and Greater Manchester have 13 teams in the top two divisions this
year whilst Paris, Lyon and Marseille, France's three biggest combinations, can
muster only four. Second, how are clubs from small cities in France able to
compete successfully with their big city neighbours? To update Ravenel's data,
in the last five years, the championship has been won by a major conurbation
only once (Paris Saint-Germain, 1994) with smaller cities' teams winning in 1995
(Nantes), 1996 (Auxerre), 1997 (Monaco) and 1998 (Lens). To answer these
questions, Ravenel divides his work into three sections. First, he outlines the
spatial distribution of top flight football demonstrating that it is essentially an
urban and national phenomenon. Unlike rugby or basketball, football has
conquered the whole of France with most of the principal population centres
having a team in one of the top divisions. It would be erroneous, though, to
assume that football in France is always associated with big industrial cities as
Ravenel's analysis demonstrates. Ravenel then takes a historical perspective in
his second section to examine the phases in the development of the sport in
France. The first professional championship was held in 1932 and encompassed
the oldest clubs located in the north, the east and the south east (e.g. Paris, Lille,
Marseille, Sète). Between 1970 and 1993, the second division was opened to
amateur clubs prompting an expansion of top-flight football into the smaller
towns of central and western France (e.g. Auxerre, Guingamp). The third section
of the book describes the part played by local authorities in funding football clubs
which, along with the method of distributing television money outlined above, is
seen as a determining factor in the tendency for French cities to have only one
club and for small city clubs to be as successful as the conurbations. Most
football stadia are owned by local authorities and even in the late 1990s on
average 11 per cent of clubs' incomes was provided by local authority funding.5
Local authorities would not fund more than one club in their area as to do so
would not only splinter their budget but also inadvertently fund local tensions and
antagonisms instead of supporting regional consensus. To promote this sense of
community, local authorities have proved adept at using football to project their
own regional identities which are, in turn, reiterated by the spectators
themselves and by media sports journalists commenting on football. Three case
studies follow to support the hypothesis: Bastia ('la spécificité corse'),
Guingamp ('l'élite à la campagne') and Auxerre ('le bon sens paysan').
Football in France may be seen, then, as a spatial extension of that country's
urban development and of its politico-administrative philosophy (State
involvement in sport as a public service) and structures (the promotion of
regional identities via local authority action).
We have seen that in a country which has had its affection for football
rekindled both by staging the World Cup finals and by winning its first
major tournament since 1984, academic interest in the sport itself is
continuing to grow. Furthermore, this interest is diversifying as football
attracts the attention of researchers working in a wide range of disciplines
from ethnology to geography and from history to sociology. Most
importantly, the three texts under review all highlight, from their different
perspectives, the central issue of how football reflects social structures and
identities and it is, indeed, this very issue which will prove to be a source
of much debate in the ever expanding study of what is, after all, the most
popular sport on the planet and a vibrant element of French popular
culture.
Notes and references
1. DAUNCEY, H. and HARE, G., 'Sport, culture and society in modem
France', Modern and Contemporary France, 6 (1998). p. 287.
2. E.g. WAHL. A . Les Archives du football. Sport et société en France
1880-1980 (Gallimard/Julliard. 1989) and BROUSSARD, P. Génération
supporter (Laffont, 1990) respectively.
3. BROMBERGER, C., Le Match de football. Ethnologie d'une passion
partisane à Marseille, Naples et Turin (Maison des sciences de I'homme,
1995).
4. For more on this issue, see DUKE, V. and CROLLEY, L., Football,
Nationality and the State (Longman, 1996), ch, 9.
5. In France, football, in common with other sports, is invested with the status
of public service by the State which delegates its mission in this respect to the
football authorities. Local authority funding on this scale (until the recent law
change) is, then, entirely consistent with this philosophy.
6. The European Championship finals, also held on French soil.