00:00Kylian Dembape, a Cameroonian father and Algerian mother.
00:03Ousmane Dembele, a Malian father, a mother of Mauritanian and Senegalese descent.
00:07Randall Kolomouani, parents from Kinshasa.
00:10Bradley Barcola, Togolese roots.
00:11Desiree Douai, Iphorian parents.
00:14And in goal, Meek Mignon, born in French Guyana to a Haitian mother and a father from Guadeloupe.
00:19How French is the French football team?
00:23France are tearing through the 2026 World Cup.
00:26Five wins from five.
00:27Tonight, a quarterfinal against Morocco.
00:28Now look at that team sheet again.
00:30Mali, Algeria, Senegal, Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, Haiti, French Guyana, Guadeloupe, Congo.
00:35Nearly a perfect map of France's former empire and the wider Francophone world.
00:41Decolonisation may have dismantled the empire, but football shows that history still wears blue.
00:46But there is one small irony I want to tell you about in this video.
00:49At the very moment, these sons of immigrants are France's greatest advertisement to the world.
00:53France is moving towards a party built on the promise of sharply reducing immigration.
00:59The National Rally.
01:00The name at its heart is Le Pen.
01:03Back in 1998, when France won its first World Cup with a multi-racial team,
01:07Jean-Marie Le Pen dismissed that side as artificial.
01:10He said it was not truly representative of France because too many players had foreign origins.
01:15His daughter, Marine Le Pen, inherited the party and while she has tried to soften its image,
01:20opposition to immigration remains at the heart of her politics.
01:23This week, a Paris appeals court upheld her conviction over the misuse of European parliament funds
01:28while modifying parts of her sentence.
01:30She has announced that she intends to run for president in 2027.
01:34She's been to the presidential runoff twice before.
01:36Twice, she lost to Emmanuel Macron.
01:38But Macron cannot run again.
01:39For the first time in years, the Alicia Palace feels within reach.
01:42So, here's the split screen that is France today.
01:45On one side, a football team celebrated across the world as the face of a confident multicultural nation,
01:51the Sons of Africa and the Caribbean.
01:53One win away from another World Cup semi-final.
01:56On the other, a presidential frontrunner promising a different vision of France,
01:59one with far less immigration.
02:01France will row for Mbappé and Dembele tonight.
02:03And in less than a year, many of those same supporters may vote in an election
02:08that asks a very different question about who belongs.
02:11History has a funny sense of irony.
02:14The empire once sent France across the world.
02:17Today, the world has come to France.
02:19On the ballot in 2027, a France that wants the world kept out.
02:23On the pitch tonight, a France the world cannot take its eyes off.
02:27Tell me what you make of these little ironies of history.
02:29I'm Manish Adikari.
02:30Thank you for watching The Culture Project on Maw.
02:33Maw.
