A few days before the final of the football champions league which is held on May 28, 2022 at the Stade de France, the former striker of the national football team, Thierry Henry offered himself the luxury, in an American program , with an apparently most condescending touchdown towards the city of Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis). Missed clearance or goal in the top corner?
The former striker of the France team and 98 world champion was invited on May 4, 2022 on CBS Sport. Referring to the final of the Champions League, expected at the Stade de France for the first time since 2006, the former player insisted on telling journalist Kate Abdo that the Stade de France is not in Paris. ” Technically, the stadium is located in Saint-Denis. Saint-Denis is not Paris. Believe me, you don’t want to be in Saint-Denis, it’s not like Paris “, he explained.
Past the reality of the remark, factual, this little sentence, pronounced with the air of someone who came out of his suburbs looking at it from afar, questions the image of the French suburbs seen from France and from the International. On the one hand, it puts the spotlight on the situation of certain municipalities by pointing the finger at persistent, even growing, malaise. On the other hand, this sentence provides information on the responsibility borne by the public figure Thierry Henry, thus shortening the debates or leading them offside on television sets.
However, the soccer player, who grew up in Les Ulis in the Yvelines and evolved in Palaiseau in the Essonne in his sporting youth, knows the place well. He lifted the World Cup in 98 in a stadium freshly inaugurated for the occasion before losing a Champions League final with the English Arsenal in 2006. On May 28, the mythical place will return for the first times for fourteen years with European competition, without a French team for all that.
As a good politician, the mayor (PS) of the town, Mathieu Hanotin was quick to react. “The contempt with which you have characterized our city is not acceptable. […] We are not Paris, but we are not infrequent either “, he vituperated in a Facebook post the day after Thierry Henry’s intervention on CBS.
Admittedly, Saint-Denis is not the most bucolic town in the Paris region. Moreover, it assumes somewhat frightening statistics, recalled in part by the city councilor. The percentage of unfit housing is one of the highest in France, between 19* and 25% depending on the neighborhood when the poverty rate fluctuates around 37%. More than 50% of Dionysians are under 30 years old. Insecurity in the public space is also a scourge with 36% of violence against people (20.5% in Seine-Saint-Denis, 13% in Île-de-France and 10.5% in France) and 58 .5%, theft and damage (twice the national average).
But Saint-Denis remains a city with a rich history and heritage. It is, in fact, the city of the basilica of the Kings of France whose work to reassemble the second spire began in the spring of 2022. In addition, many structuring projects are progressing both in urban planning and in architecture. in the sectors of Landy, Pleyel or even the river eco-district.
Not to mention the start of construction of the future Olympic swimming pool. Because the city of eastern Paris will also benefit greatly from the 2024 Olympics madness since almost all the infrastructure to be built will be done on its territory, enough to create jobs and housing for the city which is sorely lacking in it. No doubt Thierry Henry does not know much about the 2024 Olympics in Paris, oops in Seine-Saint-Denis.
In fact, the calendar of major events also includes the city’s candidacy for European Capital of Culture in 2028, one of the notable arguments of which is to regenerate the perception of the suburban city.
For the mayor, Saint-Denis will then be far from the No Go Zone implied by Thierry Henry, thus recalling that each risky statement can have serious consequences. However, is the former champion so far from reality?
Under the Hidalgo era, Paris lost a significant part of its inhabitants who, no longer having the means to live in the city center, first took up residence in the neighboring towns, gentrifying certain towns which were able to attract crowds, while making people forget certain black spots in their territory, such as Pantin or Montreuil.
Saint-Denis, like its neighbors Saint-Ouen or Aubervilliers, has not succeeded in this feat of integrating young wealthy families despite a historic center with a varied transport network. As a result, the social and class mix so much vaunted by the mayors of the red belt no longer exists, like the popular but pleasant neighborhoods in which many people grew up.
In Saint-Denis, nicknamed Molenbeek-sur-Seine, local politicians had the good taste to be elected on community promises, no longer making much of empirical republican concepts including secularism. Until the recent rallying of the mayor to France Insoumise in view of the legislative elections, in an agreement purged of all references to secularism.
The opportunity to emphasize, contrary to what Mathieu Hanotin added in his response to Thierry Henry that ” The situation of the suburbs today is the result […] of an abandonment of the State for working-class neighborhoods “. However, the State does not abandon the populations in difficulty and treats, in particular through the public school, each citizen with equal opportunity. For this, it is a question of not turning a blind eye to the existence of religious sub-leaders and other preachers.
On the side of city policy, questions emerge. It is not the millions of euros from the State, the Department, the Region and Europe that the city has failed to get rid of its communitarian climate and the violence that has resulted from it for years. In Saint-Denis, it is the Republic that has been abandoned in the neighborhoods, with the complicity of elected officials. ” Fraternity is when you recognize yourself as an equal, when you can mingle, socialize, you can divide, even to the danger of affirming a nation within the Nation, and confronting it.. » as historian Guylain Chevrier reminds us in an op-ed published in Le Figaro (10/05/2022)**.
Integration and appeasement through sport no longer need to be proven. So since the former international sportsman seems more aware of the situation of certain suburban towns, could he not also reinvest the social and human terrain to instil the sporting values of living together, equality and secularism in young people? of a city not yet completely lost rather than frighten the American visitor in advance?
Alice Delaleu
*Insee and City of Saint-Denis figures
** https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/societe/comme-l-a-dit-thierry-henry-saint-denis-n-a-pas-grand-chose-a-voir-avec-paris-20220510
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