In Paris, the agony

The champions' exit: A black day for 'Les Bleus' as France meets its Waterloo to leave a nation in shock

Napoleon said it all. Amid the travelling fans of France in South Korea yesterday, there was a man dressed head to foot as the Emperor. At the kick-off, he had pinned a scribbled sign on his Napoleonic hat reading: "Let's make history."

At the final whistle, with the score reading Denmark 2 France 0, his hat displayed just one word "Waterloo".

At least Waterloo was a near-run thing. At least the Emperor lasted 100 days. France, the champions of the world, the champions of Europe, the favourites to win the 2002 World Cup, lasted only 270 minutes. In that time, they lost two games, drew one, and scored no goals.

It was the miserable level of performance of the once all-conquering "Bleus", as much as defeat and elimination, that stuck in the throat of a demoralised and disillusioned France yesterday.

"It's unbelievable. We played like beginners. My village team plays better," said Claude Gondi, a 21-year-old student, after watching the morning game on giant screens in front of the Paris town hall.

After the euphoria of four years ago, when one million people cavorted to celebrate the nation's first World Cup victory on the Champs Elysée, France was plunged at 10.18am Paris time into the deepest, self-flagellating, existential gloom.

The shares of the major French television channel, TF1, which had paid millions for the exclusive rights to the World Cup, also dived.

All over France, crowds or groups of people had gathered in cafés or bars, delaying their journey to work (or school) in the hope of a miracle. They started the match in high hopes and ended it in despair and, sometimes, anger. "Playing badly happens to anyone but playing with no guts or spirit, when they are paid what they are paid is a disgrace," Antoine, 34, a motorcycle messenger, said.

The intellectual, afternoon newspaper Le Monde – a newspaper that used to ignore sport – splashed the news of the national team's defeat, and first-round elimination, on its front page.

Its droll, political and social commentator, Pierre Georges, unsure whether to laugh or cry, caught the national mood exactly. He wrote: "The France football team, whose exploits need no recalling, since they have stuffed themselves down our throat, morning, day and night, turning themselves into a prodigious troupe of singers, strolling players, troubadours and advertising poster-children, has fallen flat on its face in the luxuriant grass of South Korea.

"Above all, they failed to score a single, minuscule, goal ... neither with their heads, nor their feet, nor their buttocks nor their shoulders. They achieved a perfect zero."

The original exploits of the multiracial "Bleus" in 1998 became a political event, a symbol of how successful France might become if it set aside its divisions.

The team was, in the words of President Jacques Chirac, the epitome of "Une France qui gagne" (a France that wins).

The ignominious elimination of largely the same, if ageing, team comes at a time when France would have welcomed a dose of the same sporting medicine.

After highly divisive, back-to-back presidential and parliamentary elections, which saw first the breakthrough and then rejection of the far-right National Front, the country needed to lose itself, or find itself, in sporting glory.

It was not to be. Whether the multiracial nature of the France team – seen as overwhelmingly positive four years ago – will now be seized on by a minority of French xenophobes as a cause of weakness remains to be seen.

One Parisian policeman, quoted by the national news agency AFP, flirted with racism in recalling the description of the 1998 World Cup winners as "black-blanc-beur" (black, white and Arab).

"Ce n'est plus la France black-blanc-beur, mais black-blanc-beurk," he said. ("It's no longer France black, white and Arab but black, white and yuk."

Explanations for the cause of France's football humiliation (the worst performance by a defending champion in the World Cup) were legion.

The players were "arrogant" and overpaid, said some. They were more interested in appearing on wall-to-wall TV adverts than in playing football. They were exhausted and over-played, said others. It was all the fault of Roger Lemerre, the taciturn France coach, said many.

Even though he won the European Championship for France in 2000, he was attacked by fans and pundits as a tactical novice and a weakling unable to control the swollen egos of the France stars, all but three of whom play for big clubs abroad.

The stars will return to their clubs next season, not much poorer. The financial consequences for French domestic football could be disastrous.

The French league is already in dire financial trouble, as it struggles to match the budgets of other European clubs, despite smaller TV income and much higher taxes.

The big French clubs were counting on another triumphant performance by the national squad to boost interest in football and their income from TV rights.

That goal has also been missed.