By reinstating Karim Benzema in the French team, Didier Deschamps has just resolved the… Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We agree that the joke is in bad taste, given the tragic circumstances that persist in the Middle East. However, it testifies to the symbolic importance of this return of the barbichu refractory among the Blues at a time when quarrels flare up in Macron’s France, whether over separatism or the weight of political Islam.
Since taking office in 2012, Deschamps has long been an unwavering support for Benzema. He protected him when he wasn’t scoring. He defended him when the Lyonnais was seen as the standard bearer of a talkative and disrespectful generation. And that this rather placid guy was even made to bear unduly the weight of the players’ strike during the 2010 World Cup… when he was not there.
After the sextape affair in 2015, Benzema was banished to punish a lack of solidarity with a teammate, but above all not to wake up Knysna’s ghosts. Deschamps has always been clear about his main mission. It was a question of reconciling France with its Blues. He had to present them as good little soldiers, sympathetic and enthusiastic. There was no question of resuming the trials against the caïds of the cities and other mechanical rollers, who refrain from singing the Marseillaise, do not have the blue-white-red in the heart and can be overly loyal to their childhood friends who have turned out more or less well.
No public apology
Beyond an understandable quarantine, the divorce was consummated before Euro 2016. Believing that he had served his informal sentence, Benzema couldn’t bear to be kept on the edge. By accusing Deschamps of having yielded to a “Racist party” of the country, he cut ties. Claiming to suffer from an injustice linked to his origins, he victimized himself accordingly. The idiotic tags painted on the walls of the villa of Deschamps’ in-laws in Concarneau ulcerated a coach who, like many football educators, knows how to combine skin colors and cultural differences.
Deschamps is a pragmatist. Results have long been his only ideology. If he had needed Benzema since 2015, he would have waved to her. He would have eaten his hat for a hat-trick saving. The tragedy of Benzema is that Deschamps had the chance to breed a golden generation. His captains Griezmann, Pogba, Varane are a little younger than Benzema. But above all, the attacking toddlers Mbappé, Coman, Dembélé are incredibly gifted. And their number makes it possible to alleviate the wounds and to ignore a thirty-something number 9 who has become divisive.
Nothing forced Deschamps to make peace with the bulky striker of Real. Especially since Benzema has offered no public apology or sent any accommodating signal in full view of all. During his years of international exile, he did not hate himself as a lean, disapproved of performing and a self-confident rebel and utterly contemptuous of the competition.
Human affairs strategist
Deschamps’ outstretched hand goes beyond the simple framework of football. He attempts a necessary reconciliation with the dark hero of a neighborhood France, a France often resulting from immigration and frequently of Muslim culture. Thus Deschamps cuts short the martyrologist and the vindictiveness that goes with it. The Basque grown up in Nantes tries an inclusive approach, more political than sporting. Even if he took the time, it means that the tricolor house knows how to offer a second chance, throw grudges in the river and repatriate all its family within it. He shows himself to be a great lord, liquidating the rather unworthy lawsuits made against him by some of his resentful peers like Cantona. And settle a quarrel that could end up weighing him emotionally.
Let us avoid thinking that the maneuver is all the more clever as this unifying diplomacy allows Deschamps to put the results to come into perspective. Indeed, no one can blame him for the absence of Benzema if ever his eleven missed his Euro. We can also fantasize about a way to treat his exit and claim the succession of Le Graët at the head of the French Football Federation.
In any case, everyone must agree that the fair-haired guy who has bleached a lot under the harness is a formidable strategist in the management of human affairs. And that he has shown a certain sense of public service and the general interest by putting an end to the prescription of the proscribed.
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