2 - Football's Françafrique

Summary

18 September 2012, Stade Charléty, Paris

In the exclusive sixteentharrondissement of Paris, the Paris Saint-Germain club, champions of France and playing in the elite European club competition, the UEFA Champion's League, are in the process of beating the Ukrainian visitors Dynamo Kiev 4–1. The expensively assembled squad, supported financially by the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, and led on the pitch by Swedish star striker Zlatan Ibrahimović, are playing in front of 42,000 supporters at the Parc des Princes, the match broadcast live and worldwide on television. Across the city, in the thirteentharrondissement, the contenders for the status of Paris’s ‘second’ football club are battling it out in a scoreless draw in France's third division. Because they are playing local rivals Red Star, this derby match attracts three times the usual attendance for a match featuring Paris FC, with almost 1,500 spectators confined to one side of the eerily empty and hollow-sounding 20,000-capacity Stade Charléty. The Paris FC line-up features three Malians, two Ivorians, an Algerian and a Malagasy. All seven are graduates of football academies established and run in Africa by former French international footballer Jean-Marc Guillou. ‘Ici, c’est Paris’ (This is Paris) is the unimaginative motto routinely unveiled at the Parc des Princes as PSG bid to conquer Europe thanks to their vast resources. AsL’Équipe Magazine's report on Guillou's quieter attempt to reverse the fortunes of a football club in the area reminds readers, ‘Ici aussi, c’est Paris’ (‘This is Paris too’).

Making sense of Les Sénefs

Since the mid-1980s, as television revenues boosted the financial rewards for clubs and players, European football has become one of the very few routes for (a very small minority of ) young Africans to access previously unimaginable wealth. Linguistic affinities and pre-existing networks facilitated the flow of African talent to France in a process accelerated by the plethora of ‘academies’ set up in Africa. At the same time, French companies hold considerable control over the broadcast of European and African football in Africa. These flows of talent and capital, which mirror in several ways France's neocolonial relationship with its former colonies in Africa generally, were showcased in the opening match of the 2002 World Cup, held in Japan and South Korea, in which France was drawn to face Senegal.