Emmanuel Petit recalls France ’98: how table tennis nearly cost them the trophy, what was said at half-time in final and how his goal ruined a childhood premonition
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Former Arsenal midfielder Emmanuel Petit won the World Cup with France in 1998 and here he discusses his memories of that tournament on home soil.
Click on the link to read part one of an exclusive interview with Ladbrokes: Fanzone in which Petit talks about the current Gunners team and does not hold back in his criticism of Cristiano Ronaldo.
Manager banned us from playing table tennis at World Cup
Everyone is different and so every player has their own way of dealing with the idea of being away on international duty, and the mental challenges that come with that – being away from your friends and your family, being in the same space for several hours a day. We were lucky to have such a great set-up in Clairefontaine, I think there were three or four floors to the castle. Most players would have their own rooms but some chose to share with someone because that was their best way of preparing.
When you’re in a competition like a World Cup, you have to stick together, you have to look out for each other because you’re all going through the same thing. Most of the time you’re without your family, and so your team-mates become your family.
There’s a lot of downtime that comes with a tournament which spans across a month, so you need to figure out how you’re going to occupy yourself. You could sleep, but we were always advised not to sleep for too long, because we needed to keep the right balance between managing nerves and maintaining energy levels.
We had video games, there were snooker rooms, table tennis tables and bicycles for us to ride around the castle grounds. A few of us would play cards, some of us read, others had massages. We had such a great set-up, and the French Federation understood the need for us to be surrounded with things to do.
Some of our table tennis games got crazy, to be honest. I remember it was actually an issue for the manager, Aime Jacquet, and his staff. When you go into a competition like this, the first few days are full of emotions, so many emotions and pressure. You need to take care of that, and you need to let some of those emotions out. Unfortunately for the manager, we all did that on the table tennis table.
As soon as you arrived at the castle, you could see the table tennis area. They were huge rooms, or course, with high ceilings, and so you could hear the noise constantly. Those games got really competitive. You could hear them from all around the castle. Guys were shouting, smashing the bats on the floor, screaming at each other, trying to win games. And because the floor was so well kept, we’d constantly be slipping on it. One player was so close to damaging his groin as he stretched to make a shot.
Honestly, it was becoming a real problem because the games were too emotional, so the manager had to step in and put an end to it. “You’re fighting so much over table tennis, I’m going to have to put you in more training sessions.” It was so intense, so competitive.
You have to be careful with this kind of thing – it sounds crazy but it’s true. Remember the story about the Brazil team before the World Cup final in 2002? They were playing video games and all of this, and taking it all very seriously. But it takes so much out of you mentally, especially when you lose, your mind goes crazy.
L’Equipe’s treatment of us in 1998 led to eggs and tomatoes being thrown at their offices
One word I would use to describe the World Cup in 1998 would be ‘serenity’. We could feel the pressure from the beginning of the tournament, before a ball had even been kicked. We had so many critics, every single day in the press it seemed to be all everyone was talking about on the radio, on TV and in the newspapers. The pressure was very bad against the national team, but you could feel something from the fans, the people of France. With every game that passed, you could feel a change across the country. There was hope. The expectation was always there, but the mood had shifted, the articles were different with every win we registered.
You could see there was a community beginning to surround the national team. You can imagine how big a moment this was for the French people, on home soil, having never reached a World Cup final before. We failed many times in semi-finals or at earlier stages. I can remember us losing to Germany when I was a kid, and that sort of thing stays with supporters. So when you’re in the position we were in, as the host nation, it was incredible.
You start thinking about your family, your whole career leading up to this moment, this is the icing on the cake, maybe even the peak of your career, despite you still being relatively young. When you get to a World Cup final, you’re not just talking about football any more – it’s more than that. For any player who has tried to convince themself it’s just football, that’s ridiculous. When you play for your national team, you are not just a football player, you’re representing your whole country. You have to behave on and off the pitch, and act professionalyl at all times.
France's 1998 World Cup winning side is iconic 🤩
Name them all 👇 pic.twitter.com/oxDIymy1US
— GOAL (@goal) April 25, 2019
In 1998, in the days leading up to the final against Brazil, we felt complete serenity within the camp. Nobody had done what we had done before, so how could we feel pressure about what happened next? If you’re the kind of person who thinks about things in these moments before they’ve happened, if you let the pressure of the occasion get to you, if you’re thinking about going up against one of the best teams in the world, or what happens if you lose the final, or how much of a hero you’ll be seen if you win, that’s how you lose a game. You need to think about how privileged you are, how lucky you are to take part in this kind of occasion. It’s something which is so precious.
I can remember in the days between the semi-final and the final at our camp in Clairefontaine. The sun was shining, everyone was so calm inside the squad. We knew there was excitement, expectation and pressure building outside of our four walls, and it was funny to see how much things had changed in the press, and how everyone was now behind us as a team. We had been getting killed in the newspapers, and it was only now, with one game to go, that they were starting to get behind us. As a result, L’Equipe offices ended up getting it with eggs and tomatoes from supporters.
Pressure was mounting across the entire nation in the build-up to that final, but it didn’t change anything at all for us as a team. It didn’t change the way we ate, slept, trained and prepared – we stayed together. Nobody had changed. It was such a good environment to be a part of. Everyone was happy. We were ready to make history.
To win a big trophy like the Champions League or the World Cup, you have to ride your luck at times. You might say it’s destiny, and it was no different with us in 1998. For me, we finished that tournament with the best defence, the best attack and we didn’t lose a single game. We improved a lot throughout the tournament, but – of course – our route was not easy. Italy and Croatia, back in the day, were very, very difficult to beat. Every time we played Denmark, they were trouble, and then we had Brazil in the final. That’s not an easy route at all, so of course, you need luck to be on your side.
Excitement, screaming and managers slamming hands on tables – a half-time World Cup dressing room
We go in at half-time in the World Cup final, at home, in front of our own fans, and we’re 2-0 up. We’re 45 minutes away from achieving something our country had never before managed. We get into the dressing room and there’s just too much excitement.
Traditionally, we’ve always been very mature. We were a very experienced group of players and we knew how to control our emotions under usual circumstances. For five years, we were pretty much unbeaten. We used to show so much serenity, maturity and confidence over that period. It didn’t matter what had happened before, during or after the game, we always kept our emotions intact.
But this one was different. It was a World Cup final. We’re 2-0 up against Brazil. It’s a dream. We could almost touch the trophy – and because of all of that, the excitement was simply too high.
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Aime Jacquet steps up, amidst all of the noise, and he smashes a table with his hand.
“Guys, guys, you have to calm down, all of you. We’re winning 2-0, but the way you’re acting right now is the best way you could go about losing this final. You have to all calm down. I don’t recognise you. You are so excited.”
He was right, of course we were excited. We were thinking ‘guys, we’re going to be world champions!’
But we still had 45 minutes – maybe more – to play.
“Quiet, I don’t want to hear anyone any more. You shut up, you drink, you breathe, you recover. Get on the floor, get your legs up, recover. Close your eyes, concentrate.”
That’s what he said to us, and he was right. The rest was history!
My injury-time goal to make it 3-0 ruined my childhood premonition
People forget we played over 20 minutes of that final without Marcel Desailly, who was sent off for two yellow cards in the second half. People also forget Laurent Blanc got sent off in the semi-final after what happened with him and Slaven Bilic. I can’t remember many occasions where the eventual World Cup winners have finished the tournament without either of their first-choice centre-backs available to them!
So I had to step back into a centre-back, which wasn’t something which was completely foreign to me. Throughout my career I was always a versatile player, someone who could operate in central midfield, wide-left, left-back or centre-half. So for me it didn’t really faze me too much. It was easy… we were already winning the game, we had control of things and we knew what to expect from Brazil. They were going to throw everything at us to get back into the game, but we had confidence in our great goalkeeper, Fabian Barthez, as well as a lot of character in that defence. We were a unit with a lot of desire.
The fact we were playing with 10 men against the 11 men of Brazil meant that the supporters also gave us a little bit more, and that really helped us see out the game in the end.
We could feel after 15 minutes in the second half that the Brazilian guys were losing patience. They didn’t play as a team, they were shooting from everywhere, trying to play as individuals. They tried many, many times, and to be honest with you, I think they probably should have scored. But, that being said, I could’ve had two more goals myself in the first half. Cafu managed to deflect one of my efforts which – I’m sure – was heading for the net. But anyway, it doesn’t matter now!
And then, of course, I managed to score in injury-time to seal the victory for us. You might wonder what I was doing in that position in the first place, especially as we were down to 10 men. But, if I’m being honest, I put it entirely down to the fact that I had played in England for a season. It changed my game for the better, and led to me having a much more offensive outlook on things than I did in France. The fact I found myself in that position, so high, so late in the game, is down to Arsenal and England.
In the last few minutes, I think Rivaldo takes a shot and it deflects off one of our defenders and out for a corner. At this point in the game they are just throwing everything at the game, so when the corner is defended, there’s a break on for us. Cristophe Dugarry carries the ball forward, and I had a quick look around me and saw the Brazilian guys had given up. There were two or three minutes left and maybe they thought that corner was their only chance of getting back into the game.
Emmanuel Petit recreates his goal from the 1998 World Cup final! 🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/26CFu7CmmA
— Soccer AM (@SoccerAM) October 15, 2017
I saw Patrick Vieira, he was making a run ahead of me, fresh off the bench and so full of energy, so I said to myself “Let’s go, let’s have fun together!”
There was no risk at all, they weren’t getting back into the game, they weren’t defending any more. Dugarry plays it out wide to Patrick who knocks it forward for me to run onto, and that’s it. I got it.
It’s funny, but I had this feeling, a long, long time ago, when I was a kid. I guess you could call it a premonition. I said that one day France would win the World Cup at home, in Paris, beating Brazil 2-0 in the final. I couldn’t believe that I was the person, all those years later, who was scoring the goal to break my premonition!
