Given the corporate framing, the boards covered in adverts, the heavy Uefa air, it might have came as a surprise to some of those looking on that Marcus Thuram should respond the way he did at a press call in Paderborn on Thursday, prelude to France’s tournament opener against Austria on Monday night in Düsseldorf.
Asked about the rise of far-right politics in France, the prospect of the overtly nationalist National Rally (RN) party taking a majority stake in parliament at the snap elections that will now take place around the quarter-final stage of this tournament, Thuram could have equivocated, looked after himself, hidden behind the professional athlete’s tunnel-vision persona.
