Just before the France-Ireland football match in Paris, I met my charming, gentle, retired, sixtysomething French neighbour on the stairs of our Paris apartment building. "No," he said. "I'm not watching the match. I never watch France play football. The team disgusts me because they are not really French."

What did he mean, I asked (although I knew exactly what he meant). My neighbour mumbled something about not liking the team because they didn't sing the Marseillaise before matches.

What he really meant was that there were too many non-white faces in the line-up (seven out of 11).

I pointed out that every single France player in the now infamous 'main de dieu' World Cup qualifying team was born in France and mostly in Paris. He looked embarrassed, made a "so what" hand gesture and walked away.

The match, as you know, was won by a brilliant dribble by one of the players whom my neighbour does not regard as French. Unfortunately, Thierry Henry (born in Ulis, near Paris, of parents from the West Indian "overseas departments" of France) dribbled the ball with his hand, not his foot. He has since been contrite when it suited him. He has tried, while preserving the advantage that he unfairly gained, to preserve his too-smart-and-nice-to-be-a-footballer reputation.

That same night thousands of young people from the poorer suburbs of Paris poured on to the Champs Elysees to celebrate the fact that their country had qualified for the World Cup finals. These were French kids, born in France, but they were not celebrating France's morally challenged victory over Ireland. They were celebrating -- boisterously, and at times violently -- Algeria's victory over Egypt in Algiers.

Violence

In yesterday's Liberation newspaper, a young French man of North African origin, a student at business college Sciences-Po, told an untold story of that night.

He and many other young people left the Champs Elysees to avoid the scattered scenes of violence. They were attacked by squadrons of CRS riot police as they celebrated peacefully at Porte Maillot a kilometre away. Anyss Arbib (21) described how he was sprayed in the face with tear gas by a riot policeman who screamed: "Get out of here you dirty Arab."

"I couldn't find a way to explain to him that I was at least as French as he was," Mr Arbib said.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has just launched a debate on "national identity" in France. He wants the nation to consider what it means to be French in 2009; what the French should be proud of; why they should regard Frenchness as an honour.

I have lived in France for almost 13 years. I adore France and I adore the French. I have to admit, however, that I have found the events of recent days -- Sarko's crusade, Henry's handball, my neighbour's comments, the celebrations by French-born Algeria fans and the brutal response of the CRS -- rather unsettling.

Mr Sarkozy cannot easily be labelled a racist. He is the first French president to promote politicians from racial minorities. And the events of recent days suggest that Mr Sarkozy is right. France needs an honest debate on national identity and race.

At the same time, Mr Sarkozy might ponder the volume and shrillness of the reaction, not just in Ireland, but all around the world, to Henry's successful hand-dribble. What annoyed many people was not just the incident itself, but Henry's behaviour afterwards.

He celebrated madly and then told the referee that it was a foul, when it was too late to change the outcome. He commiserated with Irish players but refused to accept that the handball was deliberate. He wanted it both ways.

It seems to me the incident caused such a global furore partly because the team that benefited was France. Seen from abroad the French are viewed as a nation that likes to ignore rules and, at the same time, maintain a rather high-flown opinion of themselves.

Evidence

They want to be the nation of human rights but to mumble under their breath about black French footballers not being French. They want to be a champion of the Third World but to be mildly racist. They want the French West Indies to be French but not the French West Indians, like Henry's parents. They want it both ways.

There are many other, wonderful things to say about the French, but on the evidence of the last few days, whatever my neighbour might say, Henry's national identity could only be French.

hnews@herald.ie