President Macron will watch the match from Qatar as Paris refuses public viewings of it.
PARIS ― Before the World Cup got underway in Qatar last month, a fourth of French soccer fans said in surveys that they would boycott the controversial tournament. There was widespread outrage over the Persian Gulf state’s treatment of LGBTQ people and migrant workers, as well as the contest’s carbon footprint.But that was before their national team stormed into the soccer final.
The French president is one of only a few top European officials who have attended the World Cup this year. But his presence in Qatar, and his recent insistence that “sports should not be politicized,” appeared to capture the predominant sentiment among French soccer fans in these final days of the World Cup.For those fans who were having second thoughts about their initial boycott plans, Macron’s defense of the tournament has served as a justification to give in.
On Wednesday, a group of left-wing members of the French Parliament held a minute of silence to mourn the migrant workers who died in Qatar before the competition began.Unlike during previous World Cups, major cities like Paris, Bordeaux, Marseille and Strasbourg will not show the final on large screens in vast public viewing areas. Bars across Paris are expected to be overcrowded, and some fans may not find space to watch the match.
The city’s mighty Paris Saint-Germain soccer club is owned by Qatar Sports Investments. And leftist Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who unsuccessfully ran against Macron in the presidential In many ways, the Paris boycott of a World Cup hosted by a country that owns the city’s most valuable soccer club has encapsulated the dilemmas that many national teams and governments faced during this World Cup: Sending a stronger signal would often have gone against their own interests.For David Samzun, mayor of the city of Saint-Nazaire in western France and a Socialist Party member like Hidalgo, a boycott of the contest would have been “unsustainable.
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