“They wanted to kidnap Hidalgo! »headlines the newspaper
The Team May 23, 1978. More fear than harm: Michel Hidalgo, the coach of the France team, flew off with his players and the staff of the Blues for Argentina and the 1978 World Cup. This FIFA tournament organized in South America is quite simply the most scandalous World Cup in history. General Jorge Rafael Videla took power in 1976 (with the help of the United States) to install a bloodthirsty dictatorship.
The situation is dire. Videla’s government targets communists and political opponents, as well as doctors, priests and journalists. Nearly 30,000 people were “abducted” until 1983. They are called the desaparecidosthe missing. They were tortured and killed, notably in the basements of the Naval School in Buenos Aires, 800 meters from the Monumental, the home of River Plate, the Argentina-France stadium and the Mundial final. 500,000 people are forced into exile.
In France, intellectuals and left-wing associations asked the French team to boycott the 1978 World Cup. A petition collected 150,000 signatures. However, the players are determined to play in their first World Cup, like the new star Michel Platini, and the FFF categorically rules out this outcome. The government of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing refuses to comment. Diplomats nevertheless negotiated the repatriation of two children of a French woman killed in Argentina…
The Blues eliminated after two matches
On the eve of departure for Argentina, on the road to Bordeaux station with his wife, Michel Hidalgo is forced to stop. A white Citroën GS rushes towards him. Three men appear. The coach is held at gunpoint and someone takes him further towards a small wood. “There was this revolver in my back… I thought I only had a short time to live… I grabbed the barrel of the revolver, it fell to the ground, I picked it up before him, he ran away and they got back in the car to escape”he will tell on TF1.
Hidalgo thought for a few hours about giving up on the World Cup, but boarded the Concorde with his team. Only Dominique Rocheteau is affected by the movement. He meets Bernard-Henri Lévy in Argentina and organizes a meeting at the EDF hotel. Only four of his teammates join him. “Platoche” and his teammates lost against Italy (2-1) and Argentina (2-1), before a useless victory against Hungary (3-1), during the famous match of the Blues in jerseys with green and white stripes. Our podcast tells the story of this World of Shame.
