14 July 2026

Ahead of today's World Cup semi-final between France and Spain, remarks by former Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy have triggered intense discussion in the European press and elsewhere. He stated that France had a top-level squad but added that they lack any French players. Aurore Berge, France's Minister for the Fight Against Discriminations, denounced the comments as racist.

Open/close all quotes

Lamia El Aaraje, deputy mayor of Paris, states in El Pais:

Being French is not a question of ethnicity, ancestry or skin colour. It is a political promise, a contract that each individual signs based on what they contribute, not on what they inherit. One can belong to a nation through the blood one has received or the blood one sheds - by birth or by choice. But never because of the colour of one's skin. That is precisely what makes our nations something more than tribes, and that is precisely what nationalists in every country cannot forgive them for. On Tuesday evening two great nations will come together in Dallas - nations that did not have to be pure to be great.

The French national team shows successful integration through effort and commitment, Webcafe notes:

Sport is one of the few areas in which people from poor, predominantly migrant-populated ghettos can successfully integrate into society. Sport is one of the few remaining areas in which a person can prove their own worth - through hard work, effort, dedication and achievements - rather than through who their parents are and whether they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth or in a squalid ghetto. In football you only get ahead if you fight hard and constantly prove yourself - to yourself, to the team and to the fans.

France faces challenges with its self-image, The Conversation points out:

Ours is a hybrid society - a nation shaped by its colonial history, yet one that remains at times uncomfortable with representations that diverge from a traditionally white image of France. The problem therefore seems to lie less with the French national team and more with France's own image of itself. This sometimes appears to be frozen in the pre-colonial image of a white France, without fully acknowledging that today's France is the product of a complex and multicultural past.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung observes that the French team's results have long been tied to debates over players' backgrounds:

We need only recall the euphoria when France won the World Cup for the first time in 1998 and half the country celebrated on the Champs-Elysees chanting Black, blanc, beur. Or the Knysna fiasco in South Africa in 2010, when the players went on strike in protest against Nicolas Anelka's exclusion from the team and then found themselves labelled with racist stereotypes. Nowadays there's little talk of these old grievances. Everyone likes winners. But the ugliness that has momentarily faded within is coming back from without, like an echo that brings shame not on the team, but on the country.

Teams across sports reflect France's diversity, Libération adds:

The fact that a particular skin colour predominates in the French national team highlights above all the impact of the housing allocation policies pursued since the 1950s, and the importance of football as a pathway to success for a section of the French population from a migrant background, a group that has been disadvantaged by ghettoising urbanisation. But regardless of whether the Bleus in football are Black, the national rugby players have accents from the south of France or overseas territories Wallis and Futuna, and the members of the French equestrian team often bear aristocratic surnames: they are all the Bleus.