A fresh row over racism towards the French team has broken out in the build up to Tuesday’s World Cup semi-final showdown between France and Spain after a former Madrid prime minister described the team as not French.
Former conservative leader Mariano Rajoy wrote in a newspaper column that the French team was “of a very high level, certainly, though without French players”, setting off a furious reaction.
“France has no skin colour. Any statement to the contrary is either stupid, racist or a combination of both. This exceptional team shows the best side of France,” foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot told French television.
Barrot said he was confident the performance of the French team in the match would deliver the best response.
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French interior minister Laurent Nuñez called Rajoy’s words “absolutely unacceptable” while France’s anti-discrimination minister Aurore Bergé called for an end to “repeated racist outbursts”.
“It’s time they stopped and that sport becomes sport again: a place where you are judged on your talent and by no other criteria,” she said.
The remarks even drew a clarifying statement from France’s embassy in Spain.
“Without wanting to wade into controversy, let’s recall the facts. All the players of the French team are French. Of 26 players, 23 were born in France. The three who were born abroad are also French,” the embassy wrote.
“The words of Mariano Rajoy about the French team give off the unacceptable whiff of racism,” French Football Federation president Philippe Diallo wrote on social media.
“Our players don’t need any certificate of nationality from a former Spanish Prime Minister. The French national team belongs to France.”
In Spain, the incident set off a furious row between the ruling Sociality Party of prime minister Pedro Sánchez and Rajoy’s People’s Party, which is in opposition, with the government accusing the former premier of shaming the country and causing a diplomatic incident.
Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares said he had called his counterpart in Paris to discuss the issue and accused the conservatives of trying to sabotage Madrid’s foreign policy.
A spokesman for the People’s Party insisted Rajoy’s words were “sarcastic and without malicious intent” and should be seen as an attempt to express support for Spain.
It comes not long after a separate racism row triggered an investigation by Paris prosecutors into whether a Paraguayan senator should be pursued for aggravated public insult or incitement to hatred or violence for online remarks about star French captain and Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappé.
Celeste Amarilla called Mbappé, who was born in Paris and grew up attending private school and learning the flute, a “colonised Cameroonian” who was pretending to be French and was raised around chimpanzees and coconuts.
Mbappé responded by calling Amarilla a “despicable” woman whose “brazen racism” had distracted from the “historic effort” made by Paraguay’s football team, before their elimination in a 1-0 French victory secured by an Mbappé penalty on July 5th.
French president Emmanuel Macron commented that Mbappé had scored another goal “against racism this time”.
He had yet to comment on the words of the former Spanish prime minister Rajoy. But Madrid’s current premier, Sánchez, made a statement to say that “xenophobic statements” shamed Spain.
“There are those who still measure belonging by surname, place of birth, or skin colour. Others measure it by our roots in a country and our will to contribute to it,” Sánchez wrote on social media.
“France, see you in the semi-finals. May the best team win, and may racism lose.”
France and Spain meet for the semi-final on Tuesday night at 8pm, with the French side favourites to progress to their third consecutive World Cup final, in which they would face either England or Argentina on Sunday.
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