Ancien regime team revive French national spirit

PARIS - Collective, nationwide madness is a known yet rare phenomenon and France is on the brink of experiencing it for the second time in eight years.

After a dreadful start to the 2006 World Cup that had supporters reaching for their baseball bats to greet the team on their expected early return to Charles de Gaulle Airport, les Bleus have suddenly found the magic touch.

In a revival so miraculous that even Lazarus would have found it corny, the team that a week earlier had been written off as a bunch of uninterested ageing millionaires have routed Spain and Brazil to reach the semi-finals of the tournament.

The match tomorrow morning against Portugal is already being pre-written as a classic and, with the exception of scheduled transport and the disciplined services, it is hard to imagine anyone in France who will not be glued to the television.

Every mind swims with the vision that France could be heading for another 1998.

"It's like a dream, a moment of collective happiness," said French fan Atanase Perifan.

"People who walk past each other every day without saying a word are finally talking to each other.

"Yesterday, in all the apartment buildings in France, all people talked about was the victory [over Brazil], and that included grannies who didn't even see the match but followed it because they heard the noise from neighbours watching it on television."

The victory against Brazil was watched by 18 million people on national television.

Thirty thousand of them watched it on a giant screen at Charlety Stadium in the capital, Paris.

As the victory sank in, half a million people crammed the Champs-Elysees and tens of thousands crowded the Canebiere, the main avenue in Marseilles.

Music festivals in Brittany and Strasbourg were sidelined as fans clustered near radios to hear the game, their singing of the Marseillaise competing with rock music,

The nightlong partying also had its bad sides - a man in Nice, maddened by the noise of celebrating, shot and badly wounded two rowdy fans before being shot by police.

Scores of people were arrested in Paris amid scenes of drunken unrest, window-smashing and police-taunting - it's not just the Poms who like to put it about during football season.

But Tricolore flags, face-paint, anything with a cockerel motif, replica football shirts all are good right now. The mood on the blogs is one of astonishment, mixed with reverence for the team so recently scorned and the vision that France's old-timers could even hoist the cup one more time.

"I say that France can make its dreams come true," said fan Alain Valtier of Brest, while a Parisian calling himself Barbe-rousse said: "I have never lost trust in our beautiful team and especially in [Zinedine] Zidane, who is not a player, but a genius."

From the simple act of kicking a ball into the back of a net, many good things could flow: national unity in a country that is divided in many ways, and a healing of racial wounds made raw by the rioting in the high-immigration suburban housing estates last year.

In 1998, the success by a team who were a mixture of African, European and Arab descent was called the black, white and brown victory, echoing the Tricolore flag's red, white and blue.

The same colours of 1998 are being rediscovered today. "France's victorious multiculturalism is on display, and with such class," said Yves Cochet, a Green who is a Paris MP.

Perifan added: "Football is succeeding where urban policies have been failing for 30 years."

But others have their own views - far-right veteran politician Jean Marie Le Pen was last week castigated when he declared that there were far too many "players of colour" in the French national team - there are 16 in a squad of 23.