In a video entitled "Message from the French football team to the students of France" and shared on Twitter by the Minister of National Education, Youth and Sports Jean-Michel Blanquer, nine players from the French team France deliver a unifying message to young schoolchildren in France.
And also pay tribute to Samuel Paty - history and geo teacher beheaded in Conflans-Saint-Honorine on October 16 - two days before the next school year.
In a tense social context in France, Antoine Griezmann, Clément Lenglet, Steven Nzonzi, Hugo Lloris or Raphaël Varane thus address the students in a sequence of nearly two minutes.
They notably recall the values of the Republic.
Long live the Republic!
Long live our teachers!
Long live our school!
The message of the French football team ⚽️ 🇫🇷
to all our students.
For the return to school on Monday and the tribute to Samuel Paty: pic.twitter.com/bz1qvqBMQa
- Jean-Michel Blanquer (@jmblanquer) October 31, 2020
If the initiative is commendable, on social networks on the other hand, the twittosphere has started to panic.
"Not enough Blacks" for some, "absence of emblematic players (Mbappé, Pogba, Kimpembe)" or "not representative of France" for others.
A sum of unfounded arguments: at the French Football Federation (FFF), we want to be very far from the controversy with this sequence born of a meeting last week between Mr. Blanquer and Noël Le Graët, the president of the FFF.
"People are constantly looking for controversies"
"This is a video that was shot in an emergency, and according to the tight schedules of players sometimes engaged in the Champions League or the Europa League, we assure the Federation.
No player refused to participate, and everyone was contacted to do so.
There is no controversy to be found there.
If the popularity of our players can be of use in times like these, we are the happiest.
"
Same story on the side of the ministry, which adds that the players used for this video "are personalities who speak to young people": "That people are constantly looking for controversy, it is not necessarily adjusted by these days, do we abound in the ministry.
Already these personalities take their time to help us, we can only be grateful to them.
"