From the publisher:
Remember when Zinedine Zidane lifted the World Cup in 1998? Kylian Mbappe doesn't. The forward wasn't born when the French team first became world champions. But it was Mbappe's unique talent that helped France reach the summit of world football once again in 2018, erasing years of failure, rancour and shame.
For Les Bleus, the road between these two highs was blighted by bitterly painful lows. Zidane's headbutt; a players' strike; infighting and recriminations; even sex scandals and blackmail. Mbappe witnessed it all as he honed his prodigious talent in the banlieues of Paris, and his story embodies France's journey from disaster to triumph.
In Sacre Bleu, Matthew Spiro traces the rise, fall and rise again of Les Bleus through the lens of Kylian Mbappe. Featuring a foreword by Arsene Wenger and interviews with leading figures in French football, Spiro asks what went wrong for France and what, ultimately, went right.
The author:
Matthew Spiro is a French football expert who has covered Les Bleus at major tournaments for the past two decades. A British journalist and broadcaster, he moved to Paris in 2002, collaborating with the BBC, UEFA.com, the Irish Times, The Times, the Daily Telegraph IMG and Canal Plus. Matthew has been in charge of Ligue 1 s global television coverage at BeIN Sports since 2012. He is the Ligue 1 world feed s lead commentator and presents the Ligue 1 Show, which is broadcast in more than 150 countries, including by BT Sport in the UK.
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