Neither Kanté, Pogba, Benzema, Lloris or Kimpembe: for their last Nations League games, Kylian Mbappé and his teammates had to deal with the absence of 15 internationals. a butchery
The football team of the French National Assembly is experiencing a similar situation. This Wednesday he will play a charity match against the National Union of Professional Soccer Players (UNFP) for the benefit of the ‘e-Enfance’ association, which fights against cyberbullying. Problem: Several players who were originally supposed to play the match will eventually not show up on the match sheet.
Nothing to do with possible injuries: rebels, socialists and environmentalists announced their retirement on Tuesday, due to the integration of deputies from the National Rally (RN) to the team.
· What is the “football team of the French national assembly”?
The French National Assembly football team was created in 2014 with the aim of showing another side of politics through charity matches. His first coach was none other than Guy Roux, illustrious coach of AJ Auxerre for more than 40 years.
The team, if it is not the same, is mixed. Between 2014 and 2022, parliamentarians such as Éric Coquerel, François Ruffin (LFI), Barbara Pompili, Olivier Véran, Éric Woerth (Renaissance), Aurélien Pradié or Pierre-Henri Dumont (LR) were part of this team. This year several deputies from the National Group have joined the staff. Among them, Philippe Ballard, Julien Odoul, Alexandre Sabatou or even Emmanuel Blairy.
· Why do several parliamentarians refuse to participate in the party?
These integrations did not please the rebels, socialists and environmentalists. In a press release, LFI denounces a “political recovery” of the event and accuses the RN deputies of wanting to affirm their “alleged normalization.”
“Football players but more inclined to tackle the right winger than to give him passes, the rebel deputies therefore choose not to help him score points with this first game,” the statement read.
The same echo among the socialists where the “banalization of the extreme right” is denounced through a press release.
“We believe that there is no possibility of being a companion of people with whom we fight in the hemicycle”, explains Boris Vallaud, leader of the Socialists in the National Assembly, on BFMTV.
On the side of Renaissance, the new presidential party, Aurore Bergé invited her people not to participate in the party. He addressed the deputies of his group in a message that BFMTV was able to consult. “I can only recommend not participating in a match that will result in a ‘team photo’ where we will therefore return to the formula that ‘we wear the same shirt’. It is not like that,” writes the Renaissance manager in the Nacional. Assembly.
“We don’t play on the same team. Neither far right nor far left”, he concludes.
· How are parliamentarians who maintain their participation justified?
Obviously, Karl Olive, Renaissance deputy for Yvelines, will not follow these recommendations. “In a previous life, he was a sports journalist. He commented on the matches of the French team, when there were players from Paris Saint-Germain and Olympique de Marseille ”, recalls who will be one of the captains of the Assembly. football team.
“[Ils] They were torn on the pitch in the league but they weren’t in the wrong fight when it came to playing in the colors of the France national team.”
“I really wanted to play this match with my colleagues, whoever they are,” lamented on BFMTV, Emmanuel Blairy, deputy for the Pas-de-Calais National Rally. According to him, the latter “reject democracy.”
Marine Le Pen, head of the RN at the Palais Bourbon, criticized RTL as “ridiculous competition”, denouncing “hate, all the time, everywhere”. According to her, sport is a “place where politics is not done”.
Within the Les Républicains (LR) party, Pierre-Henri Dumont denounced in a tweet a strategy consisting of “creating rumors so that people forget internal setbacks.”
“The essential is forgotten: we are going, thanks to our sponsors, to deliver a check for €35,000 to the association”, also indicated the deputy from Pas-de-Calais who is with Karl Olive, one of the team’s captains.
Guy Roux, for his part, said he was “dismayed” on BFMTV after the non-participation announcements. The former coach of the Assembly soccer team recalled that when he led the team, the players “were not singled out.” Guy Roux recalled a “dynamic young man from Amiens, sitting with the rebels in the Bourbon Palace: François Ruffin.
“He was selling his book to people on the right and the presidency in the locker room,” he laughed.
Another anecdote: A “leftist deputy from the North”, whom he made “play on the right”. “He made everyone laugh.”
· What about other sports?
Soccer is not the only sport in which the Assembly has a team. Rugby thus has its Parliamentary XV, which competes each year in a VI Parliamentary Nations tournament in which it faces English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh and Italian deputies.
And if it is true that the RN deputies had never before joined the eleven of the Assembly, it is not the same for the rugby team. On RTL, Marine Le Pen thus recalled that Alexis Corbière (LFI) and Louis Aliot (RN) had joined in the Parliamentary XV during the previous legislature.
“The National Assembly is a place of confrontation of ideas but through this parliamentary XV, it is an opportunity once again to meet other deputies to see them differently, to realize that despite the disagreements, there is a common passion. ”, the rebel deputy confided in a France 3 report in 2019.
“This socialization is what makes the charm of this Parliamentary XV”, he said.
But for some, the situations are not comparable. Louis Aliot, was “alone”, estimates Lamia El Aaraje on BFMTV, specifying that “today we are in something more important, more massive” with “a progressive movement of the extreme right in Europe that is extremely worrying” and the recent entry of 89 RN deputies to the National Assembly.
Source: BFM TV
