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The French Football Federation refuses to interrupt evening matches so that players of Muslim faith can eat. There was a time not so long ago when these requests did not cause any controversy in the mining or automotive industry, notes researcher Olivier Esteves.
The French Football Federation (FFF) is definitely unlucky. Not completely out of the bundle of scandals linked to the Le Graët presidency, here she is faced with a difficult dilemma in this period of Ramadan. Either she accepts some “reasonable accommodation” (to use the expression of Canadian multiculturalism) and takes the risk of fueling the Islamophobic ire of the Zemmour, Ciotti, etc. Either she wraps herself in secular purity by refusing any accommodation – barely a minute on the sidelines in order to eat – for Muslim players who practice fasting, and she then takes the risk of covering herself with ridicule. In early April, we saw this banner from the Ultras Paris collective: “A date, a glass of water, the nightmare of the FFF.”
It should be remembered that professional footballers are workers, as the sociologist Frédéric Rasera has clearly shown in his book Footballers at work. At the heart of a professional club (Agone, 2016). As in other trades in and other periods of recent history, these workers, if they share the same faith and the same desire to practice it, must legitimately be heard in order to be able to “perform” and work in conditions of serenity in order to give the best of themselves. This is all the more true on match days, this weekly culmination of a
