Sat, Jun 26, 2010 page18

• Johnny Foreigner's World Cup Odyssey: A French revolution and a nice cup of tea

  • By Johnny Foreigner
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  Vive la revolution.

  Yes, this week at the World Cup there’s been a whiff of 1789 Paris, the storming of the Bastille and the guillotine in the air.

  It all started on the Thursday of the previous, when apparently proletariat hero Nicolas “Le Sulk” Anelka told bourgeoisie coach Raymond Domenech to “go screw yourself, dirty son of a whore” at halftime during the 2-0 defeat to Mexico, although Le Sulk denied it.

  “I certainly had a heated discussion with the coach, but it happened in the sanctity of the dressing room, between the coach and I, in front of my teammates and the team’s staff. This should never have left the dressing room,” the 31-year-old striker told the France-Soir newspaper. “I insist that the words which have come out in the press are not my words.”

  Nobody would have been any the wiser, except French sports daily L’Equipe ran the story on its front page and the nobility at the French Football Federation revved into action.

  Next thing you know all hell has broken loose and the nobility quickly put our plucky working-class hero in chains and dispatched him to the nearest airport.

  PROLES

  French nobleman Bernard Saules, a senior member of the French Federation, lashed out at the attitude of Anelka and the other under-performing proles.

  “We are the only team at the World Cup who aren’t playing for their country’s pride. We need to push out some of these little shits,” he said.

  However, like a James Bond cocktail, our plucky proletarian heroes plot their revenge, decide there’s a spy in the camp and come up with a typically French response to this slight by the upper classes — go on strike.

  So last Sunday, the conspirators woke early, and with the help of some sympathetic bourgeois lawyers, hatched a plan to shame the men lording it over the huddled masses.

  They took the bus trip to training and agitator-in-chief Patrice Evra (from the Gary Neville school of working class revolt) took up the revolutionary cudgels by telling the bourgeois masters that the working classes had decided there would be no running around and kicking a ball, today, oh no.

  National team director and bourgeois oppressor Jean-Louis Valentin quit in disgust, in a paddy that Johnny’s only seen the last time he took Johnny Jr’s football away in punishment.

  “They don’t want to train. It’s a scandal for the French, it’s a scandal for the federation and the French team ... I’m leaving the federation. I’m sickened and disgusted. Under these conditions I’ve decided to return to Paris and to resign,” Valentine sulked.

  Off our working-class heroes trooped to the team coach, closed the curtains and then in the ultimate gesture of proletarian authority sent out bourgeois overlord Domenech with their pre-prepared lawyer-written statement to face the press.

  “It [the nobility] has made a decision [to send Anelka home] without consulting all the players, on the basis of the facts reported by the press,” the legal document read. “Accordingly, and to mark the opposition to those at the highest level of French football, all the players decided not to train today. Out of respect for the public who came to attend training, we decided to go to meet the fans who, by their presence, showed their full support.”

  See the appeal to the masses. See the working class camaraderie. Take that.

  Fearing full-scale insurrection and all-out communism, the nobility did what they had to do: Send in royalty.

  Step up her majesty French Sports Minister Roselyne Bachelot on Monday night.

  “I told the players that they are perhaps no longer heroes for our children,” Bachelot told reporters.

  MORAL DISASTER

  “It is the dreams of your partners, your friends, your supporters that you have broken. It is the image of France that you have tarnished. I said to the players that French football was confronting a disaster, not because it had lost a match, but because this disaster is a moral disaster,” she said.

  “They applauded me and they were crying,” Bachelot said, lording it over our working class insurrectionists — but our coal-dust-coated heroes had one more trick up their sleeves.

  Just walk about a bit in your last match against a team ranked 74 places below you in the FIFA rankings and get knocked out. The response of the nobility was swift and sure: Send them home seated in economy, that’s how to treat these layabouts.

  Wait, though, maybe the dreams of the down-trodden French working man may yet be realized. On Thursday, Luddite leader Thierry Henry was apparently off to the Elysee Palace to bend the ear of King Sarkozy.

  Maybe all is not lost, fellow workers, though apparently the storming of the Bastille back in 1789 set free four forgers, two lunatics and a pedophile. One can’t help but think a purge of the French Federation will yield a similar result.

  So what of near neighbors, le rosbifs?

  Once again, history gives us a clue.

  There is a reason, dear readers, why France is a republic and England remains part of a kingdom. The English are rubbish at revolutions, you see, and John Terry has proved it once again this week.

  Back in 1642, the English Civil War led to the execution of Charles I in 1649 and Oliver Cromwell being installed as Lord Protectorate.

  Then the English realized they’d got rid of one power-crazy megalomaniac and replaced him with another. So over a nice cup of tea, they reminisced: “Remember the good ol’ days, when we had a king.”

  By 1649, the monarchy was back. Not much of a revolution, I’ll think you’ll agree.

  Cue JT, who smelled revolution wafting his way from the French camp and, no doubt over a cup of tea, began hankering for the good ol’ days before Italian Godfather Don Fabio Capello ruled the roost, deciding to strike a blow for the English working classes.

  
  

  ONE-MAN REVOLUTION

  Sunday morning and JT announces his, as it turns out, one-man revolution to the press.

  Saying there would be a “clear the air” meeting with Italian overlord the Don that night, JT announced: “If it [what I say] upsets him [Capello] or any other player, so what?”

  Not the least of Terry’s revolutionary gaffes was to volunteer the attentive hacks the names of his co-conspirators: Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney, Aaron Lennon, David James, Peter Crouch, Glen Johnson, Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard.

  Before you could stick the kettle on, said fellow agitators were desperately attempting to distance themselves from JT’s coup faster than Ma Ying-jeou from the Maokong Gondola.

  So when the Chelsea defender got back to mafia HQ, the Don was wise to the proletariat plot. JT was leaned on by head mobster and the Don’s No. 2, Franco Baldini, and by the time of the get-together he was sitting quietly quivering in a corner.

  After waking up the next morning next to a horse’s head, JT spent the whole day apologizing to anyone who’d listen. The Don called it all “a big mistake.”

  You see, nobody messes on the Don’s patch.

  Unlike France, England went on to qualify for the last 16, the pesky proletariat silenced for the greater good and the Don still firmly in control, handing out a beer to the obedient workers.

  Just as it should be.
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