Moments after the nail-biting finish at the World Cup final on Sunday night, with French fans distraught and Argentina’s fans wildly celebrating, a spectator in the VVIP section of the Lusail Stadium in Qatar, rose from his chair and walked onto the pitch, where he kneeled on the grass and hugged the devastated French forward Kylian Mbappé, patting his head and whispering in his ear.
Mbappé—a €110-million-a-year global megastar who scored the first hattrick in a World Cup final in 56 years—stared into the middle distance, silent, crushed at his team’s loss.
He was blanking none other than the President of France.
If Emmanuel Macron aimed—spontaneously or not—to be the country’s Comforter-in-Chief, à la President Joe Biden, it has not gone down well.
“World champion of embarrassment”
The French leader’s political foes and armchair critics back home, as well as the country’s extensive soccer commentariat, wasted no time lashing out at Macron’s show of compassion for the Les Bleus team, which missed clinching their second consecutive World Cup title by a whisker; Argentina won on penalty kicks, after two hours of play left them tied 3-3 with France.
Even before the French team left the stadium grounds on Sunday night, both left-wing and right-wing politicians and pundits began accusing Macron of orchestrating a tone-deaf political show, by intruding unbidden on the players’ intimate moment of distress, for his own ends.
The harsh judgements mounted late Sunday night, when Macron posted a smartphone video to his nine million Twitter followers, showing him delivering a 95-second pep talk inside the players’ dressing room, seemingly moments after the team had staggered in from the pitch.
As Macron told them they were young enough to win many more important matches in the future, the players—many half-dressed—sat slumped in their chairs, exhausted and unsmiling, some staring at the ground. Macron ended with the political slogan, “Long live France, long live the Republic!” Bringing brief, soft claps from the team.
That unleashed a volley of both ridicule and criticism.
“Emmanuel Macron, world champion of embarrassment,” tweeted Benjamin Lucas, a Greens member of the left-wing coalition in parliament.
Danièle Obono, another lawmaker from the left-wing opposition, compared Macron’s dressing-room appearance to Steve Carell’s character in the hit show The Office, whose attempts to befriend his employees is a running gag in the series. “Macron is Michael Scott. Really. First degree,” she tweeted with a grimacing emoji.
Mbappé stardust
The political backlash against Macron came from right-wing politicians too. “It was a little appalling to see him clinging like a crampon to Mbappé yesterday,” vice-president of the far-right National Rally party Sébastien Chénu said on France’s LCI TV on Monday.
In fact, Macron is an ardent and knowledgeable soccer fan, whose devotion to Les Bleus is well-known in France; he was in Moscow at the 2018 World Cup final, to watch the team win the trophy, hugging Mbappé tight at the awards ceremony, seemingly choking back tears.
When Mbappé was weighing a transfer to the Real Madrid club last summer, Macron called him to urge him to stay on the French capital’s star-studded team, Paris-Saint-Germain. Mbappé stayed.
On Monday, at least one soccer commentator questioned whether Macron might be seeking some of Mbappé’s stardust to brush off on him—rather than displaying heartfelt compassion for his World Cup loss.
Mbappé is consistently named one of France’s most popular people—compared with Macron, whose popularity rating hovers in the mid-30-percent range, and whose party lost its parliamentary majority in elections last June.
“His speech in the locker room…smelled of opportunism,” said the editorial of the French soccer site SoFoot on Monday, calling his gestures after the match “inopportune” and “paternalistic.”
Another possible sign of the political pressures on the French players came on Monday, with the government’s on-again, off-again plans for a public welcome-home celebration in Paris, when the players return from Qatar on Monday evening.
“Not in the mood”
After Macron prematurely said on BFM Television that the team would greet fans on the Champs-Elysées avenue on Monday, French Football Federation president Noël Le Graet quickly shot down the idea, telling BFM that the players were “not in the mood to be paraded on the Champs or elsewhere.” But by mid-afternoon, the government announced a gathering with the players that evening in the Concorde square.
Of course, there is no knowing whether Mbappé, who turns just 24 tomorrow, was at all bothered by Macron’s presence on Sunday, or if he remained silent in his presence, simply out of grief and shock at losing the match.
Later photos show Mbappé slumped on the bench aside the pitch, alone, stunned at the loss, while another shows him at the medal ceremony returning Macron’s close hug, seemingly finding in him a comforting shoulder to lean on.
Tellingly, the only photo Mbappé posted to his 10.2 million Twitter followers on Monday was not of Macron hugging him, but of himself collecting the FIFA Golden Boot award in Qatar on Sunday night, in honor of being the tournament’s top scorer, with eight goals.
High-priced Qatar flights
And aside from the political response, there was also criticism of the environmental cost of Macron’s trips to Qatar, which included flying to Doha last Wednesday to watch France’s semi-final against Morocco.
The center-right newsweekly Le Point estimated the cost of Macron’s two Paris-Qatar trips to be at least €500,000 ($530,000) and possibly as high as €812,000 ($861,000)—money paid by taxpayers, at a time of high inflation and steep energy prices.
The flights emitted about 480 tons of carbon, said the magazine, “53 years of average carbon footprint per French person.”
What of Macron’s counterpart in Argentina, the new World Cup champions?
Argentine President Alberto Fernandez said on Sunday he would watch the final match from Buenos Aires. “I will live this fantastic moment as before, together with my people,” he said.
