‘It’s fertile ground’: far right tries to muscle in on France’s World Cup | Raphaël Jucobin

Even when he’s not playing, all eyes are on Antoine Dupont. With the France captain seemingly closing in on a freakishly rapid return to action after fracturing his cheekbone, the hosts’ hopes for World Cup glory on home soil appear to be back on track. Les Bleus’ star player has inevitably been the face of the competition, his growing renown attracting media attention from all sectors – some of it, though, has been very much unwelcome.

After the opening-night win over New Zealand, the far-right weekly magazine Valeurs Actuelles – which notably backed Éric Zemmour’s presidential bid last year – ran a rugby-focused issue: “La France Rugby”. The front page featured Dupont and actor Jean Dujardin, who starred in the opening ceremony, and read: “Well-behaved supporters, patriot players, exemplary values: the recipe for a well-rooted sport that’s a model to society.”

The reactionary publication went on to dedicate more than a dozen pages to lauding the sport, including an article from Stanislas Rigault, the president of the youth branch for Zemmour’s Reconquête party. It also included contributions from several major figures of French rugby, including former federation president Bernard Laporte and ex-Stade Français president Max Guazzini.

A few days later, the Oscar-winning Dujardin replied via an Instagram story, in which he scribbled out the magazine’s masthead. “Yes to La France Rugby, no to your values. Please, no political co-opting,” the actor wrote, a reaction that was reposted by Dupont soon afterwards.

Dujardin’s opening ceremony, admittedly replete with rustic and outdated cliches of France, had been a divisive topic in itself, despite the actor insisting that it was tongue-in-cheek.

The use of Dupont’s image was all the more disingenuous considering the scrum-half himself has clearly rejected those values in the past. Last year Dupont was among 50 sports personalities to add his signature to a letter calling on the French electorate to reject Marine Le Pen ahead of the second round of the presidential election. The open letter, which was also signed by Frédéric Michalak and Raphaël Ibañez, pleaded that “a vote for a party that would endanger republican values would be the worst answer” to the issues the country is facing.

The Toulouse player has sought to move on from the controversy – “I think I’ve set out my position with that act,” he explained at the next France press conference. While the 26-year-old is now fully focused on recovering in time for the quarter-finals, the fallout from the front page has generated reaction from across French rugby and politics.

The former Stade Français centre Bakary Meité, speaking to L’Équipe, pointed out: “If Sekou Macalou had been the France captain, he wouldn’t have been on the front page.”

Meité also draws a link to the racist backlash that followed an Adidas advert in the lead-up to the tournament, which featured young people from diverse ethnic backgrounds playing rugby in the Parisian suburbs, entitled: “This is the new rugby.”

Pierre Rabadan, a former France international who is now deputy to the mayor of Paris in charge of sports, told the sports daily he was not surprised to see Dupont’s image used for political ends. For the former forward, the front page was a case of “surfing” on the captain’s profile – “a guy called Dupont, who’s from the countryside. It’s fertile ground for them.”

It wasn’t the first time the former world player of the year was sharing the front page with Zemmour, having also appeared back in 2021 when he was first named Les Bleus captain. According to L’Équipe, Dupont expressed his disapproval in private, while he and his entourage have previously turned down interview requests from the weekly.

The magazine’s editor-in-chief, Tugdual Denis, replied last week with a multipage letter, explaining there were no political intentions behind the front page. “We like you for what you do and who you are, regardless of who you vote for,” he tells Dupont and Dujardin, who he praises as examples of “the genius of our country”.

Denis nevertheless goes on to lament the “bad faith of those who want to destroy everything, the trial by public opinion of those who incessantly condemn in the name of their new morality”.

The issue’s thinly veiled attempt at presenting rugby as a “patriotic” alternative to football leaves little doubt with regard to its political intentions, though. Dupont, who patently does not share the outlet’s views, could have easily done without the distraction in the midst of a World Cup campaign.

In any case, rugby’s newfound spot in the limelight comes with inevitable attention from all sides of the political spectrum. The sport’s association with politics is nothing new – several former players have gone on to represent political parties, both left wing and right wing – at the end of their careers. France’s “new rugby”, though, is heading into uncharted territory.