“To our 131 stars on November 13”. Behind the moving banner deployed during France-Kazakhstan in homage to the victims of the Paris attacks hides the story of a second, that the French Irresistibles, held back by stewards more zealous than usual, were prevented to deploy at the Parc des Princes. The stress of the context, no doubt. The nature of the message, too. “# No2YearWorldCup”, no
world Cup every two years, reference to the biennial World Cup project led by Arsène Wenger. However, we have seen worse in a football stadium, as do not fail to remind 20 minutes the band’s capo, Fabien Bonnel, who recounts the events of the evening and pleads good faith.
What is the genesis of this banner?
We had this # No2yearWorldCup banner project, which is a hashtag released by the Football supporter Europe collective when Arsène Wenger said fans were in favor of the World Cup every two years. We said to ourselves that they could not disguise our position and therefore we consulted our members internally and on the networks. 90% of them were against the Biennial World Cup project, so we couldn’t let FIFA proclaim loud and clear everywhere that the supporters were for. The idea was therefore to set up an action this weekend, with Football supporters Europe, and offer the various groups of supporters who are accompanying us to leave a message with the famous hashtag. We didn’t want anything insulting to FIFA, no “FIFA Mafia” as we can see in all stadiums, which would be more divisive and vindictive.
Was it supposed to be a banner the whole game, or just temporary?
The banner was supposed to be temporary, because there was the context of November 13 and we didn’t want to make this game a challenge. Putting a nastier message than that on a tribute day would have been rightly frowned upon. We wanted to convey the opinion of the supporters. We therefore discussed this idea with correspondent supporters who replied that if such a banner had to be validated, it would be by Noël Le Graët. Except that NLG’s position was not completely fixed, we said to ourselves that it was dead to have its validation and that since our message was nothing bad, we would do things behind their backs. without official agreement. This is the first time we did this
How’s it going at the stadium?
When we arrived, we felt a special attention from the security on our equipment, in any case more than usual. They wanted to see if we had come home [la banderole] and block it. # No2YearWorldCup, it was almost neutral, and yet we saw the excitement and panic generated when checking the material. The second stage was when we paid tribute to the victims of the November 13 attacks, when we started to prepare the banner for deployment. When we take it out to put it in the gallery, we have a whole security that falls on us and limit tears the banner thinking that it was the protest action that was going to come out. Our usual security had to step in and say, “hey, what are you guys doing, they’re doing a tribute to the dead, relax, let it go and stop wanting to tear it up.” We were finally able to do the tribute you saw.
And after that ?
At that time, we knew that the security was really in the know about the other banner and had the instruction to block our action. So much so that we asked ourselves the question of its deployment. We did not have time to decide that the whole security team came down in our ranks to search all our bags of confetti, flags and even those with sweatshirts from our association that we sell to our members and that ‘we had brought to the stadium for those who had ordered.
We saw security take the packages with the sweatshirts and show them to the camera, like “is that what you’re looking for”? There wasn’t even a reflection on what they were doing, it was crazy. They were in such a rush and stressed that they didn’t even think about what to validate.
Was there really no doubt what they were looking for?
They told us they were there for the banner, they weren’t looking for smoke, nothing. We know that the security will be angry with us for having brought in something without his agreement, but it was very light in terms of protest, done intelligently without it being able to offend anyone, except perhaps those who spoke on behalf of the supporters. Other than Wenger and Infantino, I don’t know who could have been shocked. They searched everything, at one point we asked them to stop unpacking everything and spoil the game for us, that we knew what they were looking for. Almost at the same time, they fell on the bag with the banner. We left the gallery with them and we went into the passageway to show them its contents. At the sight of the message, certain members of the security with whom we exchanged we said: “ah, that’s it”.
What is curious is that when the stewards looked for the banner, they spoke of the one “with the hashtag”. So the security knew very well what was on it. However, when the info got back to the security post, they ended up keeping it. We got them to not tear it up and give it back to us at the end of the match because we wanted to get the message across and if it got in the way, we would play on the Streisand effect. If the banner had come out during the match, it wouldn’t have gone any further. They could have slapped us on the fingers after the fact, and it would have been better for everyone.
How did other actions like this go in the other stadiums?
We are very close to the Belgians, and their supporters sent us a picture of their banner. They were able to put it themselves in the stand before the match, as an animation preparation, in full view of everyone, without that being a problem. They didn’t even have to sneak it in. It didn’t make any waves.