You don’t so much approach the home of Red Star from afar as stumble into it. Almost every building in Saint-Ouen is three stories high. Almost every street is narrow enough to make a claustrophobe sweat.
The only clues to the Stade Bauer, and even they come late, are the four brutalist floodlights that resemble the small cooling towers of a power station. That geometric style bleeds down into the main stand, which looks like the lower levels of a multi-storey car park.
It is a sunny Tuesday afternoon. Saint-Ouen is the type of bustling suburb in which the momentary silences are so infrequent that they feel unsettling. At one end of the Bauer, a primary school is kicking out for the day; kids shriek and scream as they pass a demolished stand. One or two of them fist bump a group of Red Star academy players chatting on a corner in team tracksuits. Amongst the children who pass by I count four Paris Saint-Germain shirts or jackets and one Liverpool hoodie. None wear the red star of the local team.
Seine Saint-Denis endures an uncomfortable reputation. The department has a 36 per cent immigrant population and has suffered from prejudice and suspicion that only grew following the 2017 terrorist attacks in the city; several homes in the area were raided by police. Eleven of the 40 communes of Seine Saint-Denis department, of which Saint-Ouen is one, have an unemployment rate of greater than 20 per cent (the average in France is eight per cent). One study estimates that more than one in four people aged between 18 and 24 lack both employment and qualifications.
Here, football isn’t only seen as a form of bursting the socio-economic bubble; it’s often the only form. Life in the banlieues of Seine Saint-Denis is not the underworld portrayed by France’s far-right, but it can be dull and uninspiring. As Paul Pogba (who grew up nearby) told the Financial Times in 2018, “There is only football. Whether at school or in the neighbourhood, everyone will play football. That is what helps us to not do stupid things.”
The problem here isn’t identifying talent, but keeping hold of it. Paul Ducassou, Red Star’s communication director, explains that without a high-level professional academy, clubs like theirs effectively lose ownership of their best young players when they reach the age of 16. Pogba, who played for nearby US Torcy, left for Le Havre and then Manchester United. Kylian Mbappe, who started out at Bondy, was selected for the national Clairefontaine academy and then moved south to Monaco. The unspoken accusation is clear: they take the best of what you have for nothing and then you are derided for having nothing.
Red Star FC was the child of Jules Rimet, that great football administrator and dreamer. Rimet moved with his family to Paris at the age of 11 and grew tired of his inability to find a sports team that would welcome him. Having qualified as a lawyer, he formed a sports club in 1897 that would strive to welcome any member regardless of class or background and that would be a hub of literature and culture as well as sport. The name, always anglicised in French, was picked by Rimet’s English governess in honour of the Red Star Ferry company.
This is a club with a grand history that slowly became overgrown by weeds. They won the Coupe de France on five occasions between 1921 and 1942, in the days when Guillermo Stabile and Helenio Herrera called the club their home. At the 1934 World Cup, France were captained by Red Star goalkeeper Alex Thépot.
But history counts for nothing tangible in the face of economic hardship. The Stade Bauer was badly damaged in a storm in 1999 and work has only just begun in earnest to repair it; one stand is now rubble. Following their last relegation from Ligue 1 in 1975, Red Star floundered between France’s lower leagues and almost went out of business in 2003. The club was saved but was in the sixth tier as recently as 2006. Two years later, film producer Patrice Haddad bought the club. They are now in the Championnat National, but struggling in its lower reaches.
Haddad had – and has – grand plans for this community club, but he accepts the necessary subservience to the club’s community. During recent Ligue 2 seasons (Red Star have been promoted and relegated twice each in the last eight years) the club were forced to move home because the Stade Bauer was simply unfit for purpose. Haddad’s ambition to build a new stadium was rejected by supporters. They cannot countenance leaving Saint-Ouen.
Nor should they. Two stops on the Metro north of Saint-Ouen, past France’s vast national sports stadium, lies Saint-Denis. The two places form part of the department Seine-Saint-Denis, which probably lays claim to being the most prolific breeding ground for football talent on the planet.
Its most famous current product plays a few miles to the south east of the Stade Bauer – Kylian Mbappe was raised in nearby Bondy. Seven miles to the north of Saint-Ouen is the suburb where Riyad Mahrez grew up. Tonight, those two face each other in the Champions League.
Four hours later, crowds gather on the streets outside the Parc des Princes. A club employee has erected a series of promotional sail flags that flutter in the early evening breeze. Each contains the celebrating image of a superstar. The wind increases, causing the flags to wobble in their bases, but nothing can wipe the perma-grin off Lionel Messi’s face. The photograph was no doubt taken during the dozens of photoshoots that the world’s best player was obliged to face after his sensational summer move.
On the Boulevard Murat, a garish blue BMW sports car stops briefly to hold up traffic. One of its gullwing doors opens to let out a passenger and a child climbs out of the back seat. He is wearing a half-and-half scarf and a shirt with “Neymar” on the back. His father wears a Paris Saint-Germain jacket, all white save a black club logo and the gold silhouette of Michael Jordan.
These are two of a crowd of thousands but their image – making those behind them wait, the manner in which they have been double-dipped in expensive merchandise, the supercar – feels vaguely instructive. PSG do have a storied ultra culture, with violence between factions common until banning orders were imposed in 2010. Those who bounce in the Tribune Auteuil were coming long before the Qataris came to town and will remain long after they have left. But around them, there is a mood of entitlement. It is a subtle difference, but you either go to a football match to witness its atmosphere or to be a participant of it. In large sections of the Parc des Princes, the former applies.
There is no denying that watching Paris Saint-Germain is a spectacle. It has the qualities of an all-star NBA game: your fascination is aroused not necessarily by who will win the game, but how a collection of extraordinary individuals (who were previously component parts of successful teams) will interact with each other for better or worse.
This evening, everyone gets what they came for. With 15 minutes remaining, Messi drives from midway inside Manchester City’s half and 47,000 people nudge a little closer to the edge of their seats. He interchanges passes with Mbappe, whose prominence has slipped down one place on the podium, and curls an impossibly accurate shot into the top right-hand corner of the goal. If football is an open-ended pursuit of infinite possibilities in which perfection is not possible, Messi frequently comes close. The Parc des Princes erupts and chants his name as if lauding a gladiator in Rome. This is his first goal for his new club. The first of many.
It is all deeply alluring, even if it requires a temporary suspension of our cynicism of modern sport. We may have been hardwired by celebrity culture and media hyperbole to desire so deeply to watch highly-paid individuals perform, but that’s an argument beset by flaws. Didn’t people always want to watch the best players? Home crowds across England would swell when George Best was in town.
The difference, of course, is that at the Parc des Princes the game is only a small part of the show. Nasser Al-Khelaifi pursued Messi, Mbappe, Neymar, Sergio Ramos et al to assist the fulfillment of a destiny by winning the Champions League, but their ambitions stretch beyond pure sporting glory. If PSG are merely a participant in modern football’s slow dance with hyper-capitalism, they are also its most public face.
Like it or not, those star players have signed for PSG but signed up to Qatar. The previous week, the club announced the return of the Qatar Winter Tour, during which PSG’s players will train in the Aspire Zone complex and travel to Saudi Arabia for a friendly match. “[This] is an opportunity for the club to discover the many new attractions and experiences created since their last visit and to showcase Qatar as a tourist destination,” the website bumf reads. You do not need to be a detective to spot the propaganda here.
PSG have been owned by Qatar Sports Investments, a subsidiary of the sovereign wealth fund of the state of Qatar, since 2011. The purchase was specifically designed to create a position of influence within western superpowers, deflecting from the concerns over human rights violations that include a dismal record on LGBTQ+ rights, the rights of women and conditions for migrant workers. The most recent study estimates that 7,000 migrant workers have died since Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup.
For many PSG supporters – and for all of the ultras – the club’s heart remains in Paris. The wider game sees it differently. To them, Al-Khelaifi is the puppet master and PSG a European outpost of Qatar’s western dream on the north bank of the Seine. The distance between the Parc des Princes and the Stade Bauer can be measured in light years as well as miles.
At Red Star, where home crowds are roughly 20 times smaller than at the Parc des Princes, supporters are more emotionally invested in their club than anywhere else in France. The attendances may be relatively low but then live matches only reflect one element of their connection.
Red Star’s support is strongly left-leaning as a rule and contains a significant anti-fascist core. There is a base of supporters who work on the “Citizen Football” programme, engaging with the local community to understand how the football club can best support the area. They promote a mood of tolerance at the Stade Bauer. It is not that Red Star is for the poor rather than the rich; it is that Red Star is for everyone who holds the ideal of acceptance for all.
In an area of high immigration, it is crucial that Red Star embraces the diversity of its surroundings. The first-team squad contains 10 players who hold dual nationality between France and an African nation – Ivory Coast, Senegal, Togo, Morocco, Algeria, DR Congo. Two more have Guadeloupean citizenship (one born in France, the other on the Caribbean island that is an overseas French department). In addition, three other players will represent Senegal if ever given the chance. There is no doubt that the team on the pitch represents the community that sits beyond it.
But, just as at PSG, the pitch is only a small part of the story. Championing diversity by cherry-picking the best footballers in the area only looks after the talented few rather than the many. To pursue social justice and equality, Red Star go further. Their shirt sponsor is “LinkedOut” a non-governmental organisation that deliberately pitches itself as the antidote to LinkedIn. LinkedOut aims to connect the unconnected, showcasing the CVs of people who have fallen between the cracks of the employment market: the long-term unemployed, those who have no qualifications, children who have grown up in care, those who have spent time living on the street.
Red Star’s greatest legacy lies in its “LABS”. To pursue Rimet’s original goal of creating a sports club that could provide sanctuary for any member of its community, the club formed a series of workshops on a wide variety of topics: cinema, theatre, photography, painting, dance, cookery, radio, music, creative writing. Every child that plays within the club’s structure, whatever their age, participate in these workshops that are run by experts from the local area and beyond. This is not just about learning new skills; they are also taught the importance of communication and collaboration.
I meet with David Bellion, the former Manchester United striker who ended his career at Red Star and is now the club’s creative director. It is an unusual – and some might say particularly French – role that aims to build links between Red Star as a football club and a cultural entity. For all the evidence we need that Bellion is living a different experience to most former footballers, I have caught him in a brief window between a series of engagements during Paris fashion week.
You might expect a former player to be enthused only about on-pitch performance, but Bellion is proudly atypical. He describes himself as a dreamer, with a fascination in history, languages and fashion that he believes comes through a mixture of genetics and his exposure to cultural diversity from a young age. Unsurprisingly, the initiative of which he is most proud is the LABS.
“I like to create a virtuous circle,” Bellion tells i. “When you feed the mind of the youth you create better people in the future. The goal of Red Star is not only to build football players but to build men and women. It needed a real push for us to get some sponsorship, because this club is not rich, and I’m glad I could help to find an economic model that could help the kids with these workshops. I’m not just saying this because I work here: they are brilliant.
“Let’s say Red Star has an age group of kids that play at the club. Our success is measured not by the career of the one who makes it in elite football, but in what lives the rest of the group have. You cannot gamble everything on football. We need to expose those children to many different potential passions and give them an opportunity to connect with one or more of them. It’s about opening doors to the future.
“Of course we want to create footballers, but we must be careful not to break dreams because of football. The biggest dream of this club is realised when one of those children gets a job in, say, fashion, and in 10 years they tell someone that they love their job, and that their love of fashion began because of Red Star.”
There are two pillars of Red Star’s existence that underpin everything they do. The first is to help those in the local community who need it most, providing children with the tools they need to flourish far outside the boundaries of the club. The hope is that they pay it forward, supporting Red Star and spreading the word of their work.
The second is a desire to be different. On the other side of Paris, homogeny is the natural end product of limitless wealth and limitless ambition. In Saint-Ouen, homogeny is impossible. Being different is part of who they are and must be celebrated.
“It is not our aim to be unique because we already are. Throughout the history of Red Star, the oldest club of Paris, there are countless stories that make us unique.” Bellion says. “This club was built as an institute of sport and of literature; it was never just football. What we do want to do is have an independent vibe. The society of this club, its community, the way in which it operates, is very different to many other clubs and that is something that we must be proud of.”
Bellion has an analogy that he apologises for repeating; he has used it many times in many different interviews. Paris Saint-Germain, he says, are the blockbuster box-office smash. Red Star are the independent arthouse film. That does not make them any less important or any less valuable; it simply makes them different. Another cinematic comparison comes to mind: Red Star vs death star.
Red Star will not compete with Paris Saint-Germain in this generation. The latter have grown far too quickly for half of Ligue 1 to keep up, let alone an underground, punk rock-style club on the other side of town. PSG have become the blueprint for a modern superclub: vast wealth, A-list sponsorship deals and corporate partners, the collection of superstar individuals, the relentless pursuit of trophies, the sportswashing of a nation state. It’s all here.
But neither do Red Star wish to compete on that level. They have their own grand ambitions, of promotion that does not end in immediate relegation but Ligue 2 consolidation. The work on the stadium and academy will come at great cost but Haddad hopes that it will provide exceptional return on his investment. If Red Star are able to retain the most talented teenagers just in a 10-mile radius of the Stade Bauer, they will have a conveyor belt of potential excellence greater than in virtually every other city on earth. If PSG choose to buy readymade superstars at the expense of developing Paris’ own, more power to Red Star.
It strikes that PSG and Red Star share one broad ethos that they hope to achieve in diametrically opposite ways: both clubs wish to be more than just a football club. At the Parc des Princes, that means globalisation as the arm of a nation state that aims to gain acceptance in the west through their achievement of sporting excellence. On some level, Al-Khelaifi and Qatar are aiming to be just another superclub; that incentivises homogeny. The matchday experience could be replicated at various other stadia owned by various other behemoths.
At Red Star, the globalist dream is replaced by localisation. Any danger of homogeneity is extinguished by the connection with a community that wears its diversity as a badge of honour. Under Haddad’s ownership, the potential exists to become more successful on the pitch; Ligue Un football at a remodelled and rebuilt Stade Bauer is a dream shared by all who work at Red Star.
But within that is a determination that their work off the pitch will never stop. This is not a question of conflicting priorities, more the aspiration for an idyllic symbiosis between community and club. The more successful they become, the more work they can do; the more work they do, the more likely they are to be successful.
The experience of these two clubs, literally and figuratively miles apart from each other, provokes questions about what a football club should strive to be. At some elite clubs, modern football fandom has warped – escapism became entitlement. PSG will reason that they are simply fulfilling the supporters’ desire and few who celebrated Messi’s goal on Tuesday night are complaining. But clubs like Red Star proudly follow a different ideology.
Ultimately, only by answering the internal question of what we want our clubs to be enables us to judge their success. PSG will win the French title this season; Red Star have not won anything of note for 70 years. PSG have the seventh highest revenue of any club in the world; money is forever tight at Red Star. PSG exists as a palace of gilded escapism, where you can watch the best in the world delight their audience. Red Star have shunned escapism – what value is there in ignoring what is real? They do not wish to escape their environment; they wish to be a catalyst for pride in it.
“We don’t want to globalise Red Star,” Bellion says. “What we do want to do is make it known that clubs like us do exist. There are a number of clubs that have a very specific identity that will never compete with the global elite. But please remember that this is not about a battle between two clubs in one city. They have their place, to keep the dream alive for children that want to be the next Messi, or Mbappe or Verratti. But we have our dreams. And we need to fight for them to be kept alive too.”
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3oxbFZU
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