In your closet, between the shirts and the suit that you only put on for weddings, sits a France team jersey. Flocked. According to the name on the back – Platini, Henry, Benzema or even Mbappé – we guess which club makes you vibrate every weekend, excluding international break.
While Didier Deschamps unveils his list of called ups, Wednesday November 9 at 8 p.m., two weeks before the entry into the running of the Blues for the World Cup in Qatar, franceinfo looked at the nearly 12,000 selections granted to players tricolor since 1904 in order to settle the debate on the clubs that have counted the most in the destiny of the France team.
Forever the first. This is what OM supporters can (still) say to each other. The Marseille club remains the main reservoir of internationals for the France team, the last called being the right piston Jonathan Clauss, who arrived from Lens last summer. The longevity of the Marseille club in the elite of French football – the first international called up dates back to 1926 – is remarkable compared to its rivals on the French scene, which alternately experience a phase of domination followed by periods of lean cows (the Stade de Reims in the 1960s, Saint-Etienne during the 1970s, Nantes and Bordeaux at the turn of the 1980s, Lyon in the early 2000s).
A sustained presence with the Blues which is reflected in our calculation of the cumulative selections by club (read our methodology at the end of the article). “What surprises me the most in this graph is that there are not more foreign clubs”is surprised François Da Rocha Carneiro, historian of the Blues and author of the book A history of France in crampons (editions of the Detour). The increase in the number of matches, combined with the growing exodus of French players from an early age, is mechanically increasing foreign clubs. Today, Chelsea and Arsenal, which benefit from two decades of investment in the “Farmers League”. And soon Bayern Munich, Real Madrid or AC Milan, who have in turn invested in “made in France” in recent years.
There are clearly four phases in the evolution of the club herd from which the selection draws. The Roaring Twenties were marked by the pre-eminence of Parisian and northern clubs. “The head of the selection committee, André Billy, who is also the head of the Olympique Lille, tends to select only players from the region, because he knows them”, illustrates François Da Rocha Carneiro. From the 1930s, the advent of professional clubs began, like FC Sochaux, put into orbit by the Peugeot company. “At the time, the France team was set up for a whole year, changes were only made on injury”specifies the historian, to explain the relative stability of the opposing forces during this period.
After the Second World War, we observe the rapid emergence of Stade de Reims and Lille OSC, which have become the strongholds of French football. “It was at this point that the idea took hold that the players had to have automatisms between them, and that the coaches began to take many from the same club in sight”continues Francois Da Rocha Carneiro. Gone are the days of playing rug dealers within the selection committee to spare susceptibilities. A club like the Girondins de Bordeaux jumped from 60 cumulative selections in 1982, the year of a semi-final of the France-Germany World Cup that entered into legend.
By the time OM moved to the top of the standings, never to leave it again, in 1997, the domination of French league players over Les Bleus was already a thing of the past. The Bosman judgment, allowing the free movement of footballers in the EU, is gradually depopulating the French clubs of their best players, and therefore of their internationals. In 1995, Aimé Jacquet put down on paper an eleven composed solely of players belonging to French clubs, against Norway. Five years later, Roger Lemerre composes a team playing 100% abroad for a 4-0 demonstration in Turkey.
Historically supplier clubs like Nantes or Saint-Etienne have turned into nurseries and are seeing their young shoots fly off to other skies before having accumulated the selections. The last Canary to have worn the Blues jersey in a match was none other than Mickaël Landreau, sixteen years ago. The Last Green? Stéphane Ruffier (another goalkeeper), in 2015. The last Girondin? Benoît Trémoulinas, in 2013. The last Sochalien? Marvin “new Zidane” Martin ten years ago. The last Messin? Robert Pirès, in 1998… Search for your club in our engine below.
“The model, now, is a Griezmann course”, says François Da Rocha Carneiro. A player who left before his 20th birthday abroad, who exploded without necessarily going through Ligue 1. The example of young striker Mathys Tel, snatched by Bayern Munich from Rennes this summer, in return for a check for 28 million euros despite having only played a handful of matches in the top flight, is destined to reproduce itself.
If we look at the places of birth of the players, the main urban centers of the country see, unsurprisingly, the birth of the most internationals.
It remains for recruiters from foreign clubs to find the rare pearl in the seven departments which have never seen a native of the region don the blue jersey. Admittedly, the Hautes-Alpes, Gers, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne, Lozère, Haute-Marne and Mayotte are not among the most populated departments, nor, in the case of those located in the South -West, the most worn on the round ball. “The fact that there is only one Fabien Barthez to inflate the statistics of Ariège [il est né à Lavelanet] is more of a demographic exception than a problem of competition with rugby”analyzes however François Da Rocha Carneiro.
The recent example of Benoît Badiashile, two capes against Austria and Denmark in September, shows that nothing is impossible: the native of Limoges has just become the first Haut-Viennois to play with the Blues.
Methodology : Only players who have actually worn the jersey of the France team, and who have not only been called up (like Nantes goalkeeper Alban Lafont for example), are counted. Clubs that have changed names appear under their current name. The clubs resulting from a merger generating a new entity – such as Losc, the fruit of the marriage between Olympique Lille and SC Fives – start from scratch, without taking over the selections accumulated by the previous clubs.