Supporters of Paris Saint-Germain celebrate their team's win in the UEFA Champions League final on Saturday.LOU BENOIST/AFP/Getty Images
A familiarly chaotic scene erupted in France after Paris Saint-Germain won the Champions League soccer trophy for the second year in a row. The celebrations turned violent in the French capital and several other cities as hundreds of troublemakers taunted and attacked police officers, lit bonfires, looted shops and generally sowed mayhem.
Police detained almost 900 people – mostly young men and teens – and about 200 law enforcement officers were injured. Those figures were even higher than last year, when PSG, as the professional football franchise is commonly known, won its first-ever Champions League title, elevating the Qatari-owned team to the summit of European sports.
Violence and looting seem to have become routine by-products of large public gatherings in France, especially those surrounding sports competitions. Unlike the hooliganism of the past, which largely pitted fans of opposing teams against each other, more recent outbursts of violence are seen as direct attacks on state authority by a generation of disaffected minority French youth.
With barely 10 months to go before French voters go to the polls to elect a new president, right-wing politicians seeking to replace Emmanuel Macron have seized on the recurring violence to reiterate pledges to halt immigration, step up deportations and hire more police.
Paris hosts parade to celebrate PSG Champions League soccer win after fan riots
“Only in France does a soccer team’s victory provoke riots,” Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally, posted on X amid last weekend’s chaos. “Only in France do people feel it necessary to hole up at home on the evening of a victory to avoid facing violence.”
National Rally president Jordan Bardella went even further in denouncing last weekend’s “scenes of quasi-civil war” and warning: “If I’m telling French people to wake up, it’s because pretty soon they will break down doors and enter your apartments if the state does not reassert control of its security, penal and especially immigration policies.”
Ms. Le Pen’s presidential hopes hinge on first getting a French appeals court to overturn her conviction on embezzlement charges related to the use of European Parliament funds to pay partisan staff. A lower court last year banned Ms. Le Pen from running for public office for five years. The appeals court will rule on July 7 whether to uphold that sentence.
If Ms. Le Pen’s ineligibility is upheld, Mr. Bardella is expected to replace her on next April’s presidential ballot. Polls show that either the 30-year-old Mr. Bardella or Ms. Le Pen, 57, would handily top the first round of voting with the support of about one-third of the electorate. Under France’s two-round voting system, the top finisher would then square off against whoever comes second on the first ballot in a run-off election two weeks later.
The nightmare scenario of French centrists would see either Ms. Le Pen or Mr. Bardella face off against far-left firebrand and France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 74, leaving voters to choose between two extremes. Recent polls have placed Mr. Mélenchon – whose vision of a multicultural “New France” is pitched at young progressives and largely Muslim first- and second-generation French citizens with African roots – in second or third place.
Paris Saint-Germain players celebrate after winning the UEFA Champions League Final, at Parc des Princes, Paris on Sunday.FRANCK FIFE/Reuters
The anti-capitalist Mr. Mélenchon’s program includes widespread nationalizations and wealth taxes, France’s withdrawal from NATO and major police reforms, such as disbanding controversial law enforcement units associated with repressive crowd-control measures.
Paris Saint-Germain, like the French national soccer team that will compete in this month’s World Cup, is largely made up of players from minority backgrounds, some of whom grew up in suburban public housing projects where crime and unemployment run rampant. That has accentuated the political divide in recent years, with soccer serving as Rorschach test of sorts for one’s views on immigration and multiculturalism.
The national team captain, Kylian Mbappé, the son of a Cameroonian father and mother of Algerian descent, has sparked both praise and furor for speaking out against the National Rally, most recently telling Vanity Fair magazine: “I know what it means, and what kind of consequences it can have for my country, when those kind of people take control.”
The prospect of a presidential-election run-off between the far-right and far-left underscores the steady rise of political polarization in France over the course of Mr. Macron’s two terms in office since 2017. Critics blame this, in part, on both his monarchical demeanour and his failure to address voter anxiety about economic security and crime.
In 2017, Mr. Macron vowed that his centrist coalition – he created an entirely new political party made up of former Socialists and supporters of established centre-right parties – would ensure that French citizens would “no longer have any reason to vote for the extremes.”
A decade later, as rivals gear up to replace him, more voters than ever appear set to do so.