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French press review 10 June 2014

There's a lot of football on this morning's front pages. We'd better start getting used to it, since the global footy fest that is the World Cup kicks off in two days' time and won't go away until well after the final, due to be played on 13 July..

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French coach Didier Deschamps is in confident form, saying in an interview in sports daily L'Equipe that his side is good enough to give the best opponents a fight, even without the services of the injured Franck Ribéry.

One-third of the French are happy to agree with him, 34 per cent of those questioned in an opinion poll saying they think the Blues can reach the quarter-finals, at least. Football fans are even more confident, even if only three per cent of those who consider themselves to be interested in the beautiful game think France good enough to reach the final.

Left-leaning Libération also gives pride of place to the forthcoming World Cup but from the point of view of those who find themselves excluded from a bunfight intended for the very rich.

According to one protester, real Brazillian football is played in the urban slums and that's art. But it has little to do with the game parcelled out between the TV companies and the giant sponsors like Coca-Cola and Visa.

Political commentators are warning that the advances made under the 2003-2011 Lula presidency, never as dramatic as some might have suggested, are now threatened by the global recession and an increasingly violent reaction by the poor.

In answer to those who believe that the World Cup money would have been better spent otherwise, it's worth pointing out that financing the competition has not meant any reduction in Brazillian social spending, nor have the spiralling costs been covered by the federal budget.

Conservative paper Le Figaro is concerned about the future of the main right-wing UMP party, which will be under new management as from today.

You'll remember that two weeks ago the denizens of the mainstream right were forced to throw Jean-François Copé overboard because he's likely to have some dealings with the police any day now.

On the principle that three heads are better than none, the UMP replaced the sidelined Copé with a formidable front-row combination of former prime ministers. Those heavyweights will take up their functions this very day. But not all UMP members are convinced by the triumvirate approach . . . you can't, for example, win a presidential election with a three-headed monster.

For that, says Le Figaro, you need Nicolas Sarkozy.

It is time, according to the right-wing paper's editorial, for the former president to emerge from the political shadows, where he has been growing his stubble and minding the child for the past two years.

He must stand up and be counted, even if that means taking a position on the vexed question of primary elections. Many of the same conservatives who don't like three-headed monstrosity don't like having presidential candidates chosen by the politburo. But the UMP in the past has not been very good at keeping its intestinal difficulties in the body of the party. Sarko is not the only one who fears that an open competition might degenerate into a knife fight.

There will be blood.

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