Randal Kolo Muani’s statement as far-right threat grows in France | Euro 2024

It took a reluctant moment of light to decide the outcome of a cold, grey match at a Merkur Spiel-Arena in Düsseldorf, a moment that also seemed to resonate somewhat with the noises beyond the pitch.

Sports are often confused with politics. Sometimes, and often by design these days, sports are political. Here we are. We are the dreamers. Let us not forget Qatar’s ghost anthem for the missing workers of the great sports takeover.

Randal Kolo Muani’s role in France’s only goal against Belgium was decisive for three reasons. It was simply a key moment in this tournament, where France found their way through a game that contained all the fluidity and insouciance of a rugby scrum that repeatedly collapses.

It was a good moment for Kolo Muani, who has been injured and losing momentum for a while and already has some scars in his career with the French team. Didier Deschamps brought him on with 10 minutes to go. He ran with enthusiasm and gave France a little more in their attacks.

The ball had been sent a little quicker through the Belgian defence when Kolo Muani had time to turn and shoot, in a game that had until then offered neither time nor space. A deflection from Jan Vertonghen sent the ball into the Belgian net, an own goal according to UEFA, but enough to decide a complicated game that France deserved to win, if only because Belgium rarely seemed to take an active part in it.

France will therefore qualify for the quarter-finals in Hamburg on Friday. A beaming Kolo Muani was hugged and cuddled by his teammates at the final whistle. And in context, it felt, however briefly, like one of those moments when sport seems to be trying to give you something, an asterisk to the rest of the world.

The French team is under pressure in this tournament. There are questions of legacy and scope for this group. Some like to say that England have a golden crop of talent that is the envy of the world. Imagine if that were true. And if you were also the world’s leading exporter of football talent. And you had the best player in the world. Then you would be France. That is a weight to bear.

There are other factors to consider. The most obvious is the presence of talented and high-profile players like Kolo Muani in this French team that represents, broadly speaking, something that is not the National Rally, the far-right, immigration-obsessed party that won the lion’s share of last night’s parliamentary elections.

The RN wants stricter citizenship control. The RN wants to reduce access to certain jobs for people it considers insufficiently French. Kolo Muani’s parents were born in Kinshasa. He has dual nationality. He and his teammates embody a happy and functional picture of people from a deep fringe of French society.

Jules Koundé then declared: “I am disappointed to see the direction that France is taking, with strong support for a party that is against our values. The far-right party, the National Rally, which is against freedom and against our coexistence.”

For now, French footballers seem an island of calm compared to the rest of the country. The elections were called by Emmanuel Macron at the start of the tournament. Another round is coming. The left-wing parties still hold the largest share of the vote together. But France is still dithering over the issue, moving closer than ever to its first far-right prime minister since the Vichy government during the war years.

As for football, there is a deep history here. The National Rally is the same Le Pen-derived vehicle that made France’s rainbow 1998 World Cup team an element of its own racial politics, dismissing future world champions Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry and Lilian Thuram as insufficiently French.

Members of the current team have called for democratic action against the current incarnation. Kylian Mbappé has said he hopes to still be able to wear the French jersey with pride once the elections are over. This is more than a question of semiotics and an edifying badge. It is a direct and hostile threat to these young French people and their place in this culture. These are the kinds of voices that have been expressed throughout football in the last two weeks.

And so the evening in Düsseldorf gave us a moment that felt, even briefly, a little bigger than the game. Which, frankly, is no bad thing, because it was like watching a high-stakes knockout round of the World Knitting Championship.

Football existed. The passes were clean, precise and vague. It could have gone on forever, with players from Belgium and France coexisting peacefully on the same pitch for the next 30 to 40 years.

Deschamps had dropped his wingers, reconfiguring the team into a meatier 4-4-2. The result was heavy, authentic tournament football. At their best in the second half, France played like an unterrified England, like a good unterrified England, like a good unmad, unterrified England. OK, maybe not really like England at all. But Gareth Southgate has his playbook, his Deschamps notes. That’s what we could have had.

Mbappe has been very involved at times. Mbappe is essential to his team, not just because of his impact, but because the rest of the team has been set up to cover for his absences. It would be wrong to say that Mbappe is bad at defending. No one really knows. He could be brilliant at it. He just chooses not to explore it.

It was a game that was always going to be decided by a detail. At the end, Kolo Muani couldn’t help but smile, even as he was mobbed, patted on the back and dragged away to speak on French television. This is a player who could have won the World Cup for France in Qatar but who saw Emiliano Martínez make a remarkable save at the end of the game. “It’s going to be there for life,” Kolo Muani said at the time. Well, he has a different memory now.