Yeah and the French team has been like that for at least 25 years? I remember Le Pen Snr. calling the national team “a gang for negros” before the 1998 WC (that one really backfired on him because they ended up winning the whole thing, with Tour de France level Epo fueled blood values).

Overall it has to be said that in Western Europe the kids of (usually rather poor) immigrants and those of the half-Moors in Southern Italy are the only ones left who play football on the streets and around the city all day long. Most decent middle class families want their children to focus more on school so that they can get a decent job in the end. Unlike the USA athletes don’t get a free happy meal college degree in continental Europe and the college fees are actuallly reasonable and nothing big, so there’s also less of an incentive to really push kids into sports.