The 44-year-old was once an unmissable presence on the sport on the Lusail Stadium in Qatar on Sunday, even making an look within the crew’s replacing room to ship an emotional post-game pep communicate.
“You’re an amazing team,” Macron informed the gamers, pounding his fist in his hand for impact. “No other team would have got here and come back on two occasions and being so close to winning it.
(AP photograph)
“You had the center, the starvation, the will and the skill to get right here and that’s the reason why I sought after to come back and say thanks,” he added, according to a video posted on his social media accounts.
France were 2–0 behind until the 80th minute before a quickfire double by Kylian Mbappé To install leveled the game.
In extra time, Argentina went ahead 3-2 thanks to a second goal from Lionel Messi before another Mbappe penalty led to a shoot-out to settle the final.
Macron strode onto the pitch after the game, notably grabbing Mbappe in front of the TV cameras and holding the striker’s head to his chest.
He talked animatedly to the distraught player who showed little inclination to exchange pleasantries with the head of state on the pitch and barely acknowledged him.
“It was once somewhat irritating to look him caught like glue to Mbappe,” the far right opposition MP Sebastien Chenu told the LCI channel.
The famously tactile leader also stood next to the emir of Qatar in the line of VIPs as they handed over awards and medals to the players in the closing ceremony.
“We will have to no longer politicize game,” the incoming leader of the ultra-left France Unbowed party Manuel Bompard, wrote ironically on Twitter, using a phrase used by the president himself on November 11.
Macron had made the comments about the World Cup when asked about Qatar hosting the competition despite its human rights record.
“Macron did he cross excessive?” asked the BFM news channel, adding he had acted like France’s “twelfth guy” throughout the evening.
Macron is a passionate follower of the national team who also made headlines in 2018 by leaping to his feet in the stands as France won the World Cup in Russia.
“The president isn’t at the pitch,” read a commentary in the SoFoot.com website under the headline “Macron, miles offside”.
“His position and place will have to no longer be observed like this, at those kind of moments which, whether or not tragic or wonderful, belong simplest to the gamers and perhaps to the personnel,” it added.
The president additionally traveled to Qatar to observe France beat Morocco within the semi-final on Wednesday, and then he made any other changing-room look.
As the crew traveled again to Paris on Monday, the president traveled to the French plane provider Charles de Gaulle, which is anchored off the coast of Egypt, for the standard Christmas meal with French troops.
Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera informed France Inter radio he would officially congratulate the gamers within the New Year.