At the Stade de France
A magnificent tribute to great men.
The 80,000 spectators at the Stade de France celebrated Hugo Lloris, Steve Mandanda, Raphaël Varane and Blaise Matuidi, 2018 world champions and now retired on the international scene.
Twenty minutes before the start of the return match of the Blues against the Netherlands, the Dionysian enclosure was able to salute the career of the four boys.
Only one man was missing, Karim Benzema, cold with Didier Deschamps and absent this Friday evening.
As in September 2000 with Didier Deschamps, Laurent Blanc and Bernard Lama, the French football federation wanted to mark the occasion for the release of history of the selection.
By their duration, their regularity and their qualities, Lloris, Varane, Mandanda and Matuidi have all written one of the most beautiful pages in the history of the France team.
If the quartet was able to meet and greet the France group of Didier Deschamps on the edge of the lawn when the warm-up had just ended, it was Blaise Matuidi, gray jacket and white t-shirt, who entered the field at 8:27 p.m. first, accompanied by one of his sons.
Under the applause of a Stade de France full to the brim, something extremely rare more than twenty minutes from kick-off.
Hugo Lloris, the former captain of the Blues, came with his family.
FRANCK FIFE / AFP
There followed Mandanda, Varane and the record holder of the selections, Lloris, in the company of his three children, while his wife was at the edge of the field to immortalize the scene with her mobile phone.
The man who has worn the captain's armband the most with the Blues, 121 times, won the match by applause, before starting a clapping with the turn of the French supporters.
A unique moment.
And forever in the memory of these four heroes.
Before kick-off, the 80,000 spectators and 22 players on the pitch held a minute of applause in tribute to two former glories of French football.
Claude Simonet, former president of the French Football Federation, died on March 14.
A combined tribute also after the disappearance of Just Fontaine, who died on March 1.