Football: World Cup - Lens with a foggy focus

John Lichfield hears the believers and doubters in a country that will host the world

France won the first round of the World Cup. That was the consensus of home-team sporting and press opinion after the draw for France 98 in a chilly Marseilles on Thursday.

The event was declared a success, despite the stultifying exhibition match, mini pitch invasion and the understandable boos from the youthful crowd for the draw-master, the Fifa secretary general, Sepp Blatter. Most of all, the French were pleased with their own draw, giving them first-round ties against Denmark, South Africa and Saudi Arabia. "A Perfect World", said a headline in the daily sporting newspaper, L'Equipe. "The Route is Clear", said another.

"The crucial thing was to avoid England, Yugoslavia and Nigeria," the former French captain and team manager, and 1998 World Cup organiser, Michel Platini, said afterwards. "In all honesty, France should win all three matches and finish first in its group."

A few party poopers in the French press pointed out, however, that the draw put the so far unconvincing "Bleus" - great defence, excellent midfield, useless strikers - on collision course with either Spain or Nigeria in the second round. Could France's football Waterloo come in the last 16 game in the tiny northern town of Lens on 28 June? The organisers will hope not. Even now, French public opinion is slow to get excited. An early knock-out for the national team could pull the plug on the mood of friendship and festivity which Platini, and others, are desperately trying to generate.

(One goal was scored last week however: the austere daily newspaper Le Monde, which has only just started noticing that sport exists, produced an excellent 12-page World Cup supplement on the day of the draw.)

England will also play in Lens, as well as Marseilles and Toulouse, which are 600 miles away in different directions. The decision to make all the teams travel around the country in the first phase (Platini's own idea) will have other perverse effects. Spain will play all their first-phase matches in northern France. Italy will be in the north and the west. On the day England and Colombia play in a 40,000 stadium in Lens, the lightly supported Tunisia and Romania will occupy the 80,000 Stade de France near Paris.

England being drawn to play in the tiny northern town - only 40 miles from Calais; population 35,000, like playing a World Cup game in Macclesfield - might (and perhaps should) be giving the organisers nightmares. But officials in the town and at the French organising committee insist that they see no problem.

There was one controversy, however, to disturb the mood of national satisfaction: the battle between Footix and Jules. France has managed to create two rival mascots for the World Cup, both absurd variations on the sporting cockerel theme.

Footix, the official emblem of France 98, is a maniacal, parrot-like creature with a blue body and red and yellow face. Jules, named after Jules Rimet, the Frenchman who invented the World Cup, resembles a vacant duck wearing a beret. He is the unloved mascot of the French team.The family of Mr Rimet objected last week to the use of their forebear's name on this "sad bird". Mr Platini objected to the profusion of mascots.

Thierry Henry, the Monaco player, put the great debate into context. "I don't give a stuff about the mascot," he said. "For all I care, it could have been a penguin, disguised as a drag queen."

Let the games commence.