League of Nations: a France-Belgium to turn the page of 2018

French and Belgians meet Thursday in the semi-finals of the League of Nations, for the first time since the semi-final of the World Cup. The reactions of Belgian players had created, and still fuel, resentment between supporters.

As the ground is slippery, Didier Deschamps put on his rain tires on Monday, October 4, at a press conference. When he was given the pole on the Belgian national football team, often triumphant in qualifying matches for international competitions, but rather paper tiger at the time of the final stages of these same competitions, the coach of the Blues recalled the CV of his future opponent: number one in the FIFA world ranking. “  The only thing, and it is to be factual, it is a very good generation which did not have the happiness to know the success through the World Cup and the Euro.  "

It would not be a question of waking up a neighborhood dispute already three years old, before the semi-final of the League of Nations, Thursday, October 7. In Turin, the Red Devils will cross paths with the Blues, dream breakers, on July 10, 2018, in the semi-final of the World Cup (1-0).

If, for a generation of left-wing intellectuals, it was better "to be wrong with Sartre than right with Aron" , Eden Hazard, himself, had felt hot, after this match, that he "  [preferred] to lose with Belgium what to gain with France ” . According to the Walloon striker (trained in Lille and pure product of French football), the Blues had the opportunistic victory when his team had assumed the weight of the meeting.

“We lost against a team that plays for nothing, that defends”, also regretted goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois. More than the release of Hazard, it is this sour sentence that had set fire to social networks on both sides of the Quiévrain. Seen from Belgium, Courtois formulated what the whole world thought of the future world champions. Seen from France, he was a sore loser and embodied the Belgian “seum” (“rage”).

"A very paradoxical relationship with France"

Since then, the captain of the Red Devils has tried to backpedal. “My reaction after France-Belgium was exaggerated… It's not the“ seum ”: it's just that you are disappointed and that you want to win,” he declared on the “Téléfoot” program in June. In spite of himself, he created a little media monster . When the Blues were exfiltrated from the last Euro by Switzerland in the round of 16, the local press reported some scenes of joy in the streets of Charleroi.

Behind this sudden love for the Nati, there would have been especially resentment and a chauvinism which is ignored for the journalist with the RTBF Bertrand Henne. The title of his column of June 29 set the tone: "Who ' seum ' the wind reaps chauvinism" . According to him, this fight has gone too far but at least has the merit of showing "a very paradoxical relationship with France". At least for the French-speaking part of the country, which "stuffs itself with TF1 and is very permeable to French social networks".