Description

How did France become the most stable and dominant footballing nation of the modern era?

From the collapse of the 1960s to the coronations of 1998 and 2018, from Clairefontaine to the global talent market, The French Game tells the untold story of how a nation rebuilt football not as myth, but as system.

Julien Peltier traces the transformation of French football into a modern power: disciplined, export-driven, institutionally ruthless, and quietly dominant. Icons rise and fall — Zidane, Mbappé, generations of stars — but the structure endures.

Blending history, politics, sociology, and elite sport analysis, this book reveals football as a mirror of the modern French Republic: centralized, contested, globalized, and relentlessly pragmatic.

Not a celebration. Not a scandal book.

A clear-eyed anatomy of excellence — without illusion.

For readers of David Goldblatt, Simon Kuper, and serious narrative nonfiction.