“We have been active, we have shown that we are tired, we never want to go through this again. “ Like his partners from Paris-Saint-Germain and their opponents from Istanbul Basaksehir, Kylian Mbappé did not hesitate to leave the lawn, Tuesday, December 8, to denounce a racist word from the fourth referee of the Champions League football match .
This historic first – the game did not resume until the next day – embodies the increased sensitivity of athletes to the issue of racism and the plight of minorities. Thursday, it is the French striker of FC Barcelona Antoine Griezmann, who announced in a press release posted on Instagram, put “An immediate term [au] partnership “ that he had since 2017 with the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, with regard to “Strong suspicions” on the company’s participation in monitoring the Uighur Muslim minority.
“Nothing better than actions”
“My France hurts”, Griezmann wrote on November 26 in a Tweet in reaction to the beating of producer Michel Zecler by three police officers on November 21 in Paris. Mbappé, for his part, published an Instagram post with the words of a song by Diam’s: “My France to me, it has values, principles and codes. “
Since a long time, “Lots of things have been said, slogans… But, in reality, there is nothing better than stocks ”, noted, Wednesday, at the microphone of the Téléfoot channel, the French world champion who, at the beginning of the summer, had shown his support for the victims of police violence, after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis (United States), on May 25. Unlike many of his predecessors, the young French striker no longer hesitates to leave the green rectangle to take a stand on social issues.
In the space of a few months, notably under the effect of the “Black Lives Matter” mobilizations, the adage “We do not mix sport and politics” began to crack.
For a long time, French athletes remained quiet. Contrary to what is happening in the United States, where many sports figures have distinguished themselves in the movement for civil rights, a certain law of silence has reigned over French sport. “At the very beginning of my career, when I wanted to tackle the issue of racism, my mother would say to me: ‘Stop darling, don’t speak’”, recalls Lilian Thuram. The former international engaged in the fight for social rights saw, in the way in which the players united on Tuesday, a gesture of historic significance: “The game has stopped. “
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