Franck Ribéry has gone from golden boy to arrogant brat in the eyes of the French public. Only success can bring redemption
This article is part of the Guardian's Euro 2012 Experts' Network, a co-operation between 16 of the best media organisations from the countries who have qualified for the finals in Poland and Ukraine. guardian.co.uk is running previews from two countries each day in the runup to the tournament kicking off on 8 June.
The last time Franck Ribéry played a leading role in the France team, he was wearing a pair of flip-flops. That was two years ago, 19 June 2010, two days after a 2-0 defeat against Mexico in the second group match of the World Cup in South Africa. The Bayern Munich player showed up in a beach attendant outfit on the set of Téléfoot, the flagship sports programme on French television, and took the mic to mumble an apology in poor French: "We're having it tough."
It was an attempt to gain absolution for his team after a defeat which had all but eliminated them from the tournament, but also to justify the events that had surrounded it, such as the verbal abuse of Raymond Domenech by Nicolas Anelka, the player inviting his coach to "go fuck himself" in the intimacy of a South African dressing room, or the Zahia affair, named after the prostitute picked up a few months earlier by Ribéry and another French international, Sidney Govou. A few hours after the broadcast Ribéry, along with his team-mates, refused to train, and he appeared as one of the ringleaders of the most ridiculous strike in football history. The result: a pathetic elimination in the first round of the competition for Les Bleus, and for Ribéry a three-match ban imposed by the French Football Federation for his part in the "mutiny" of Knysna.
Today, Ribéry is lacing up his boots for France again. And, judging by his media output, now expressed in correct French, he has probably taken lessons in communication. It is far from certain, however, that it will be enough to propel him back into the spotlight at the upcoming European Championships. Even though Dunga, the former Brazil coach, described him as "the greatest talent in the French team, along with Benzema" his coach Laurent Blanc has said time and again that nothing is guaranteed in the French team for the Bayern winger: "This position is not expressly reserved. As long as I am there, the forward position will be for the best player. [Florent] Malouda, Ribéry, or maybe [Dimitri] Payet. It's the way it is and it's not going to change."
A strange turnaround, then, for a player unanimously "adopted" by the French public during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. At the time, Ribéry was the promise of a golden future for Les Bleus. France once had Michel Platini and Zinedine Zidane. Since the latter had planned his retirement for the end of the competition, the team could now rely upon the Marseille player, then only 23. Ribéry had several things in his favour. He already had a great playing style: romantic, carefree, generous, exactly how the fans like it. He once said: "I always give my all, whether it's in training or in a match." But above all, he had such a great personal history – an atypical rags-to-riches tale à la française, somewhere between Emile Zola and Jules Ferry. "Ribéry? He's funny" said Jean-Alain Boumsong on television, running his fingers through his team-mate's hair.
Ribéry might have been funny but he was undoubtedly out-of-the-ordinary. The player grew up in the neighbourhood of Chemin Vert, in Boulogne-Sur-Mer, in the Nord-Pas de Calais; not far from Outreau, an area blighted by poverty that came to public attention in 2004 following a notorious child abuse case. It's a place where a third of the population is unemployed. He is the son of a construction worker and a housewife. By his own admission, he never went on holiday as a child "except once, to Euro Disney".
With an unwished-for symbolism, his first steps in professional football are marked by scars as deep as those on his face, the result of a car accident when he was two years old – "I was in the back of the car, and the windscreen exploded over my face." At 16, he was expelled from Lille's youth academy because of a fight at school, and at 20 was struggling in the south of France with Alès, a third division club. Rejected by Caen, Amiens and Guingamp, the player eventually found shelter in Brest, the first step of an irresistible rise to fame – Metz, Galatasaray, Marseille and Bayern Munich. It was a very unusual journey in French football, which usually favours the "royal path" of the training centres, with the majority of French internationals coming from these nurseries established by the professional clubs and the French FA.
An even more beautiful tale is that, in lieu of the supermodels that other players usually go for, Ribéry married a "normal" girl, Wahiba. "I met her at 16," he said. "We lived in the same neighbourhood. She was good for me in every way. It's not because I'm pro now that I have changed."
Indeed, for the public, Ribéry was a perfect projection of themselves: the proof that one could be a normal guy and become one of the best players in the world. He was called "Ti'Franck" – the kind of affectionate nickname they give the local boy made good. At the peak of his fame, he even had his own dedicated TV programme "The Ribéry Show" on French cable.
After that, everything turned upside down. The French went from being a winning team (victories at World Cup '98, Euro 2000, runners-up at the 2006 World Cup) to a second-rate outfit incapable of advancing past the first round of a competition (Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup). It was enough for the public to treat its heroes of yesterday as zeros. The French players were now considered arrogant, selfish, overpaid brats, cut off from a country plunged into economic crisis.
Following the crowd, the media immediately chose to tell the other story of Ribéry: no longer the kid with problems that made it to the top, but the bad-boy from the estate. Wahiba? Ribéry had Zahia, a prostitute, delivered to his home to celebrate his 27th birthday. The raffish-but-endearing character? It emerged that Ribéry had left Metz in 2004 because he had fight in a nightclub, that he physically threatened supporters when he was at Marseille and he almost had fight with another player in a nightclub a few weeks before leaving for the World Cup in South Africa. The generous and selfless player? "To cure Ribéry one should not be a doctor but an accountant," said one of his former agents. For the French, "Ti'Franck" had become Ribéry the Chav.
Today, Ribéry has set himself a new goal: to win back the hearts of the French public. "He wants to be the darling again, he needs to be loved in France as much as he is at Bayern," said Vahid Halilhodzic, current coach of Algeria and former coach of Lille and Paris Saint Germain. To achieve this, the player chose to start talking again to the French press he had been ignoring since the 2010 World Cup, and to do so with an open heart. "I'm not a saint, I'm not an educated man, but I am not stupid or twisted," he told L'Equipe. "At some point, I couldn't get my head above water, I had no idea how to get out of all this mess. I had become so famous that, at the slightest mistake, everyone knew about it and I was paying a high price for it. That's what's really tough: not having the right to make mistakes."
Alas, the road back to the French hearts is long. When he plays in blue, the Bayern forward gives the impression of trying too hard: he rushes in, trying in vain to dribble through the opposition, seeking the decisive move rather than setting up team-mates in a better position. Above all, his image in France is still clouded. Within the national squad, he is the leader of a small band of "hookahmen" – players who cannot part with their hookah-pipe, and who mock and tease the young lads from the countryside, Mathieu Debuchy, Yohan Cabaye and company.
Returning to Marseille in March for the Champions League quarter-final between OM and Bayern Munich, Ribéry was whistled at the Stade Vélodrome by the very same crowd who had worshipped him during the golden seasons between 2005 and 2007. In reaction, the player expressed his incomprehension: "In France there's been a fracture. I am trying to improve and fix it slowly but it's really hard because there are so many things I don't understand. At some point, it's just too much." To change this, Ribéry has little choice: he must make France a winning team again. Maybe then he will be able to start writing the third chapter of his life: that of redemption.
Stéphane Régy is a football writer with So Foot
انسخ الكود التالى و ضعه فى موقعك او مدونتك.
