Footballers - is there anything they don't know?
Guadeloupe-born Lilian Thuram used to play for the French national football team, and by all accounts was pretty good, being France's most capped player at 142 caps. He retired about seven months ago, and since then does not seem to have done a lot. Presumably he made quite a lot of money during his career, so good luck to him.
Normally this would be of absolutely no interest to me whatsoever, but news has leaked out that towards the end of last year Sarko and co asked him to be 'minister of diversity', which one might think is just a high-falutin' term for someone reaching out to minorities and so forth, but Libé refers to 'entry into government'. I can see no record of Thuram having any great record of achievement away from football (although he has been involved in a race-related quango) but he does have a track record of political enagagement, and furthermore engagement of the sort that would make one think that Sarkozy must have been a little over-refreshed to consider that Thuram would want the post, given that he criticised Sarko over his 'turn on the pressure hose' comment and is a fan of 'social justice', and has accused Sarko of holding 'a racist discourse' with his ministers. Further, he has taken illegal immigrants along as guests to a football match. Not really what Sarko might call one of us.
He turned the job down, by the way.
Normally this would be of absolutely no interest to me whatsoever, but news has leaked out that towards the end of last year Sarko and co asked him to be 'minister of diversity', which one might think is just a high-falutin' term for someone reaching out to minorities and so forth, but Libé refers to 'entry into government'. I can see no record of Thuram having any great record of achievement away from football (although he has been involved in a race-related quango) but he does have a track record of political enagagement, and furthermore engagement of the sort that would make one think that Sarkozy must have been a little over-refreshed to consider that Thuram would want the post, given that he criticised Sarko over his 'turn on the pressure hose' comment and is a fan of 'social justice', and has accused Sarko of holding 'a racist discourse' with his ministers. Further, he has taken illegal immigrants along as guests to a football match. Not really what Sarko might call one of us.
He turned the job down, by the way.
Labels: France, this sporting life
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, February 03, 2009 at 10:11 am.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
By turning down the job, he showed that he has considerably more integrity than Joan "CND" Ruddock's entry into Gordon "Trident" Brown's government...
» Post a Comment