Euro 2016: France faces moment of truth in football festival

Energy, excitement and uncertainty will greet the European Championships, which kick off in Paris.

And so we reach the moment: that moment when days and weeks and months dissolve, when hope rages most fiercely, when fear catches in the throat, when the football starts. At the Stade de France, the first site of the terrorist attacks that struck Paris six months ago, the tournament will begin tonight. And that feeling of not knowing, of energy, excitement and uncertainty, carries a different hue. C’est maintenant.

It is always difficult to capture the mood before the matches begin, before the adrenaline and momentum take hold, when stories coalesce or dissipate and career off in their own directions, but France 2016 feels particularly opaque. Away from the training grounds and fanzones, this is not a city awash with flags or hyperbole. Perhaps there has been too much for Paris to contend with. Perhaps it is not the Parisian way. Perhaps all that will come.

Yesterday’s L’Equipe, the country’s sports newspaper, employed a single-word headline: “FAVORIS”. Favourites. This was their description of Les Bleus, the French national side, but it was not a vivid declaration of ambition. A decent squad of former footballers from all 24 participating teams rated Didier Deschamps and his players most likely to prevail, but it was followed by a query. “Confirmation le 10 juillet?”

On page four, towards the bottom, was another story, headlined “Bonjour tristesse” or “hello sadness”, which dealt with other matters: the tight security before the competition and the industrial disputes that will accompany it. Both are unavoidable, as is the aftermath of the floods that have left pathways along the River Seine submerged. Travel, never a pleasure in this sweltering weather, is not straightforward.

At last night’s pre-match press conference, the second question asked of Hugo Lloris, the France captain and Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper, was about a train strike that will affect a line which runs past the stadium; it did not leave much scope for bravado. “I’m a fan just like you guys and I hope it won’t spoil the party,” he said. “Having a competition on French soil, we have to show a great image of our own country.”

The first question was about expectation. “Listen, I won’t hide the fact from you that this morning we felt something different when we left Clairefontaine and came towards the Stade de France and came across some fans as we got to the team hotel,” Lloris said. But the image was a peculiar one: there was little hubbub near the ground, no expectant throngs, few tricolours. Unless you are accredited, you cannot get close.

For players, for everyone, there is an edge, a sense of quickening, as the games approach - and a tension, too. Around 20 miles to the southwest, at Ireland’s training camp in Versailles, Shay Given spoke about awareness and safety. “We have a few armed guards with us and I wouldn’t want to mess with them,” the goalkeeper said. “It’s the first time I’ve had that at a tournament and they are travelling everywhere with us. I suppose we’ll get used to it, but it does seem weird.”

France cannot know. Off the pitch, there have been precautions, but on it they have only played friendly fixtures since the last World Cup when, neither awful nor brilliant, they reached the quarter-finals, as they did at the Euro 2012. In 2010, the team mutinied. They have won both of the tournaments that they have previously hosted, in 1984 and 1998, but until their match against Romania they can only imagine.

In a photo taken from the Eiffel Tower, fans attend a concert in the fan zone as part of the Euro 2016 Championships.

“We have only played friendly games,” Didier Deschamps, the head coach, said. “France haven’t played any competitive matches for two years now, so we’ll experience that for the first time tomorrow night. It’s difficult to make comparisons, to talk about what our strengths were then and are today.” One of those games was last November, when France hosted Germany and three suicide bombers detonated devices close by.

Deschamps, as a player, was called a “water carrier” by Eric Cantona. More recently Cantona accused Deschamps of bowing “to the pressure from a racist part of France” by omitting Karim Benzema from his 23-man squad, after the Real Madrid forward’s alleged role in a sex scandal. Unassuming, but typically firm, there was no soaring oratory.

“I’m not going to tell you what I’ll say in my team-talk, but there is a context for our first match and the first match of the competition,” Deschamps said. “We mustn’t make a mountain out of a molehill. We have been preparing for the last two years for Friday, June 10, so just because it’s close now, we mustn’t start asking questions. We must play with desire, hunger, generosity, while keeping clear minds. I’m not saying it’s any old match, by any stretch of the imagination.” There are plenty of reasons why it can never be that.

“I’m not going to blow our own trumpet and say we’re magnificent,” he added. “What’s important is that you mustn’t play the game before it begins. You need to keep some energy and we haven’t proved anything yet. You need to have those butterflies in your stomach. Nothing that has come before should influence our mindset.”

In all sorts of ways, that may prove difficult. The moment is now and nobody knows what will happen.

The Times