Maison explores relationship between soccer, politics

Few things link culture to politics the way soccer does.

On Thursday night, La Maison Française featured Laurent Dubois, Duke professor and author of Avengers of the New World and A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1784-1804 to discuss “Zidane and the Empire of Soccer in Algeria.” The talk was followed by a screening of Zidane: un portrait du 21e siècle (translated Zidane: a portrait of the 21st century).

Nicole Rudolph, director of La Maison Française, explained that a goal of the night was to provide a “historical context for the idea that sport, particularly soccer, has had a healing and/or uniting influence on the nation [France] since colonialism.” By using literary discussion and an avant-garde film to contemplate a sport, Rudolph said the Maison Française worked to create a space where divergent interests could meet.

Dubois used this platform to discuss the way soccer and national spirit have influenced interaction between the Algerians and the French, showing how the sport has highlighted the complicated relationship. Laurent explained that while French soccer has consistently included multicultural members and recruitment, the political motivations of players’ homelands have led to controversy.

When the Algerian national team secretly recruited prized French-based Algerian players in 1958, for example, FIFA declared that any team that played the Algerians would be expelled from the World Cup. This led to tension, but more importantly to international recognition of the Algerian struggle for independence as the country defined itself through the creation of its first sports team.

Through this athletic context of historical struggle, Dubois showed how Zinedine Zidane—a French-born soccer player of Algerian descent who stepped into the international spotlight while playing on the French national team—has become “an individual crystallized as the collective.”

Dubois described Zidane as a symbol of hope who unified France in ways unseen over recent decades. Dubois replayed footage of Zidane’s goals that contributed to France’s first World Cup championship in 1998, and led to—at least for some time—“two flags, reconciled.”

During the back-and-forth that followed the talk, one of the thirty-or-so audience members argued that Zidane was not accurately depicted in the presentation, noting that Zidane himself had said “I’m a Kayble first.” With this statement, Zidane acknowledged his loyalty to Northern Algeria—his parents’ homeland—above his loyalty to France. When Dubois replied that Zidane’s immigrant heritage was discussed in greater detail in the book he wrote, the audience member responded, “I haven’t seen it in your presentation.”

Stephen Singer, CC ’64 and former Spectator associate sports editor, commended the lecture’s focus on the interaction of sport and culture. He described his bizarre experiences at the 1998 World Cup in France, where he saw “political literature being distributed to fans going in and out of the stadium.”

The talk also brought out the downsides of glorifying the French soccer team as a means of uniting the country. These concerns included the alienation of women and the function of sport, instead of education, as a social promoter.

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