Nations League: Only minor clashes in the game between France and Israel

Rarely in the history of football has a 0-0 been more fitting than this 0-0 in the Stade de France in Paris, November 14, 2024, France against Israel. Also in appearance. “Une soirée vraiment nulle,” the newspaper headlines The Parisiana play on words. The “nulle” takes up the “match nul”, which is the French term for a draw. And it qualifies the evening, the soirée, as sad, as poor, as “zero”. That was it, on a historic scale – dreary to remember.

Due to fears of violence, protests and riots, the stadium in the northern banlieue of Paris was armored: 4,000 officers were deployed, they sealed off everything, the exits of the metro and all access roads to the arena. Even if there were people who had thought about visiting the stadium at the last minute, they also decided not to go because there had been so much debate in advance about the potential dangers.

The police missed at least two Palestinian flags during access control

The international match in the Nations League then took place in front of almost empty stands: 16,611 spectators sat in the large stadium, which would hold 80,000. This is a minus record for the Bleus. Perhaps there were a few hundred fewer spectators when France played the Faroe Islands fifteen years ago in the Brittany province of Guingamp. However, no one noticed at the time, the small Stade de Roudourou was full.

This time everything stood out, especially the emptiness. “Only the VIP stand was sold out,” writes one newspaper with a touch of irony. French President Emmanuel Macron sat there, and behind him, side by side, were his two predecessors, François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. In solidarity with Israel – and in response to the violent events surrounding a Europa League game in Amsterdam, Ajax against Maccabi Tel Aviv, a few days ago. Macron then quickly decided that he wanted to be at the game in Paris, even before the exact circumstances of the chaos in Amsterdam were known, and dragged his predecessors along with him. France will not give in to anti-Semitism, Macron said shortly before the game: “Violence will never win, just as intimidation will not win.”

When the Israeli anthem played, some French fans in the Stade de France felt like balancing out the somewhat one-sided solidarity for Israel – and they whistled. The stadium’s sound makers turned up the volume of the loudspeakers so high that the whistles were almost drowned out.

The Israeli keeper Daniel Peretz from FC Bayern simply holds everything

The police also missed at least two Palestinian flags during access control, although the Paris police chief had expressly instructed them in advance to look primarily for these flags. In a sector of the stadium where Israeli fans were mixed with French fans, there was a small scuffle, not really worth mentioning. But since it felt like there were more police and reporters present than spectators, everything was registered. Stadium stewards quickly separated the hotheads, then everything was quiet again.

Football? Was hardly. A sterile, faded approach by the French towards the goal of the Israeli keeper Daniel Peretz, 24 years old – as if the atmospheric dreariness had overcome them. Peretz, who works for FC Bayern on a day-to-day basis, simply kept everything. However, it sometimes seemed as if the French simply didn’t want to shoot the ball into the goal, even from the best possible position. Maybe out of solidarity, you too?

Well, that’s not very likely. But rarely has a footballing zero been as spectacularly irrelevant as this one, while helicopters circled over the almost empty stadium.