When Dimitri Payet’s number went up, the sheer weight of what he had accomplished struck him with the suddenness of a crashing tide. France’s Euro 2016 curtain-raiser, poised to unravel into an evening of gnawing frustration and combustible inquests, had been transfigured by the exquisite violence of Payet’s left foot. In one glorious arc, with the clock stalking toward the 90th minute and Romania flirting brazenly with an unlikely draw, Payet gathered the ball outside the area, slalomed inward, and unleashed a shot that soared into the distant top corner. The championship had its ignition point.
Payet, who
had dazzled in his inaugural Premier League season with West Ham, ascended here
to an altogether loftier plane. Romania were broken, left to gather the
remnants of their gallant effort. As Payet’s substitution was announced in
stoppage time, the Stade de France erupted in collective homage. Tears, first
brimming then unshackled, traced paths down his cheeks—an image that stood
immortal over a night that see-sawed between hope and apprehension, in a nation
desperate for an embrace.
France,
after all, was carrying more than sporting expectations. The months of build-up
had been steeped in the heavy scent of unease: a national state of emergency,
bitter strikes, encroaching floods, festering race debates, political scandals.
Football was asked to provide salve, to hush the country’s many clamours, if
only briefly.
But the
football did not comply easily. It required exorcism through anxiety and near
calamity. France began with fragility. Hugo Lloris rescued them from an ominous
deficit early on, thwarting Bogdan Stancu’s close-range effort, and later was
spared by Stancu’s own profligacy at the start of the second half. The margins
were fine; fate might have penned a far crueller tale.
Olivier Giroud, meanwhile, offered a study in duality. He missed thrice—once glaringly—before finding redemption. It came when Romania’s goalkeeper, Ciprian Tatarusanu, wandered haplessly beneath a Payet cross. Giroud’s physicality disoriented the keeper—enough for him to misjudge completely—allowing Giroud to nod into a vacated goal. Romania protested, their manager Anghel Iordanescu refusing even to engage with questions about the possible infringement.
Yet Romania
never recoiled into resignation. They levelled through a penalty engineered by
Nicolae Stanciu’s thrust and Patrice Evra’s rash leg. Stancu rolled it home
with composure, a moment of vindication for his earlier squandering. France was
rocked anew.
The hosts
had already squandered gilt-edged opportunities: Payet delivered a sumptuous
ball that Giroud headed wastefully wide, Antoine Griezmann rattled the post at
the second bite after initially scuffing his effort. Didier Deschamps later
spoke of his team’s “timid” beginnings, an apt euphemism for nerves that
threatened to derail them.
Griezmann
and Paul Pogba, poster boys of French ambition, laboured ineffectually and both
were eventually withdrawn—Griezmann dragging his departure into a pantomime of
disappointment. Evra, hapless in defence, seemed to conduct his own private
ordeal under the floodlights.
And yet
amid this frailty stood Payet, a man once so peripheral to France’s plans that
he was omitted entirely from their last World Cup for inconsistency. Handed a
reprieve in March friendlies, he seized it with talons, prompting Deschamps to
marvel: “Every time he touched the ball he showed his quality.” Payet’s own
path was once humble to the point of mundane; at Nantes, his amateur contract
forced him to work in a local clothing store, honing jumper-folding rather than
goal-making. A modest YouTube clip of these retail exploits resurfaced
recently, endearing but deceptive, for here was an artist of the highest order.
When the
ball spun toward him with the night coiled in tension, Payet made his choice.
The left foot swung, the net billowed, and the tournament was forever altered.
As he walked off weeping into the embrace of Paris, it was not just a
footballer’s catharsis we witnessed but something more elemental—a nation’s
fragile joy momentarily finding voice in a single, soaring strike.
Thank You
Faisal Caesar
No comments:
Post a Comment