La Marseillaise

“Football is not a matter of life and death”, Bill Shankly didn’t say. “It’s less important than that.” In which case, why do I think it is exactly the right thing that the friendly match between England and France, scheduled for next Tuesday night at Wembley Stadium, goes ahead? I respect the view of anyone who thinks the game should not go ahead because football does not matter when large numbers of people have been murdered in cold blood, except that it does matter. Football, for all its many flaws, is part of our culture and our culture is what the fanatics would wish to destroy. We cannot let them do it.

So on Tuesday night, we welcome France to our country to play a game of football. I see this is as a golden opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with our friends across the water. Oh, I know we have had a somewhat tetchy relationship with the French over the years but most of it was mere fluff. Now is the time to unite.

The game itself will be preceded by a minute’s silence before we reach the national anthems. Here is my idea: why don’t we encourage not just the French to sing it, but us too? La Marseillaise is an anthem representing freedom, a patriotic call to mobilize all the citizens and an exhortation to fight against the tyranny and the foreign invasion. It is a wonderful anthem. Why not, for example, hand out flyers to everyone attending? What better signal would we send to the barbaric ISIS than to sing the French national anthem at the top of our voices? We have more of a reputation of booing foreign anthems, so why not sing it?

Yes, it’s a little thing, but if it could do anything to annoy ISIS, to show them that despite their inherent evil, they cannot defeat us, then let’s do it.

Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L’etendard sanglant est levé! (bis)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Égorger nos fils, nos compagnes!

Refrain