Word: french
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...those remedies may be missing the cause of the problem. Most of the booing came not from visiting Tunisians, but from fans born and raised in France. Such booing has come to be used by ethnic-Arab French soccer fans to protest the racial, social and economic discrimination suffered by those not fortunate enough to be among the stars of les Bleus. It's hardly coincidental that previous outbreaks of anthem booing (and resulting expressions of indignation by politicians) occurred before a France-Algeria match in 2001, a France-Morocco game in 2007, and a 2002 French Cup final orchestrated...
...stopped immediately". And when that happens during friendly matches, she intoned, such fixtures against "the country concerned will be suspended for a period yet to be determined" - though that risks leaving France with no one to play with should booing suddenly become a pre-game fad here. Worse still: French Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie on Wednesday night announced she'd ordered video footage of crowd shots be used to identify booers as evidence to try perpetrators in a court case for bringing "insult to the national anthem". So much for liberte...
...whistling during the anthem was a form of protest, the perpetrators would have awoken disappointed on Wednesday, as they found themselves subjected to a torrent of outrage. "Those who want to [jeer] a national anthem should be banned from the matches they've come to watch," scolded French Prime Minister François Fillon...
...just stop organizing these kinds of matches so these kinds of people will be deprived their team," added secretary of state for sports Bernard Laporte, former coach of France's national rugby team that has also been the target of some Bronx cheering lately. "We can no longer tolerate French players being [booed] incessantly, or the Marseillaise being [jeered...
...Given that the very purpose of the boo-boys is to get under the skin of French officialdom, a more effective response may be to feign indifference in order to rob the slight of its intended impact. In fact, a significant portion of the booing has little to do with politics at all - it's the reaction of white French soccer fans to the parlous state of the national team, and failure of an unresponsive establishment to rectify it by firing the widely loathed national coach, Raymond Domenech...