Something happened in the French Senate this week which was an eye-opener for those of us who have spent decades watching football fans discarded as an irrelevance.
Senior politicians invited some of them to talk about the disgraceful failures in their own system at an event that happened on their watch less than a month ago.
They allowed foreigners to berate their police for treating visitors to their country like animals, call for their Interior Minister to resign for blatantly lying and warn that, as it stands, Paris is unfit to host any major sporting events. Then they gave them a heart-felt standing ovation.
