During a press conference in view of the European Football Championships underway in Germany, Marcus Thuram, a 26-year-old striker for the French national team and Inter, invited French citizens to vote in the next legislative elections which will be held between the 30th and the 7th July. However, his was not a generic appeal to vote: Thuram urged people to vote to avoid a new victory of the Rassemblement National, the main French far-right party, which was the most voted party in last week’s European elections in France.
In recent days, French journalists have asked several players who participated in press conferences ahead of the European Championship matches to comment on the political situation in France. Responses were mostly timid, with some exceptions. On Thursday Ousmane Dembelé was the first to invite the French to vote, an appeal which was followed by those of the former AC Milan striker Olivier Giroud and the Inter defender Benjamin Pavard.
Thuram was even more explicit. He defined the political situation as “sad and very serious”, and spoke of the possible victory of the Rassemblement National as a big risk. «Every day messages are broadcast on television to support this party. As Ousmane said [Dembelè] we need to go and vote and above all all citizens must fight to ensure that the Rassemblement National does not pass.”
Marcus Thuram is the son of Lilian, former defender of Juventus and Parma, world champion with France in 1998 and now become a writer and anti-racist activist. During his career Lilian Thuram took sides several times against the French far right. During the 2006 World Cup he responded to Jean-Marie Le Pen, then president of the Rassemblement National’s predecessor party, who had complained about “too many blacks in the national team”: “If you see Le Pen, tell him that the France players feel French and they love this shirt and the country. Tell him,” Thuram said. «And long live France. Not the one Le Pen wants but the other one, the real one.”
