It is an evening that they could not forget. 27 years ago today, on May 22, 1998, the adventure of the World Cup ended without having really started for six members of the French team. While he had pre-selected twenty-eight players for this World Cup at home, Aimé Jacquet received Nicolas Anelka, Ibrahim Ba, Martin Djetou, Pierre Laigle, Sabri Lamouchi and Lionel Letizi to tell them that they would not compete. Which ended on the first coronation in the history of the Blues.
A scar that has never completely closed for these banished, who remained in the legend despite themselves has never completely closed for these banished. In his book entitled The Night of the Cursedpublished in 2018 (published by Fayard), journalist Karim Nejdari tells the secret story of the tricolor selection twenty years earlier. And tells what was said between the walls of Chamber 15 of Clairefontaine, residence of the Blues. “You guessed it, for you it's over, the time for separation has arrived”would have launched them coldly AimĂ© Jacquet.
“For you, it's over”
“My choices were difficult, I assume them, because it is in my function to assume them, but above all because I made them exclusively on field criteria. I banned the emotional of all my appreciations to decide as a professional »would he have justified himself. But at the time, others that he had the skin of these six excluded, as you can (re) discover it in the last episode of our podcast
Golazo.
