INTERVIEW – During the Euro, Le Figaro asks famous people to explain their passion for football. Writer Philippe Delerm confides his tenderness for shadow players and a form of fascination for magnificent losers.
LE FIGARO. – Philippe, where does your passion for football come from?
Philippe DELERM. – I was born in 1950 and my family was not interested in sport because in the peasant world, the effort had to be useful first, like carrying sacks of wheat. We did not have the taste for free effort. One of my first contacts with football was at school with images of players to collect in chewing gum. I was a foreigner in the world of football and I found it fabulous, inaccessible and therefore marvelous. I was really passionate about football from the moment I went to see the matches in the old Parc des Princes, a magical stadium with its velodrome and its bike races at half-time. And then I played football, in cadets, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye which was not yet Paris SG at the time.
Do you remember your very first memory of the France team?
It was a memory in front of the TV in 1963, with our guardian, because we had no
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