In 2002, the Algerian national football team played, for the first time in history, a French national team (the French national team, in fact, that had just won the World Cup, and catapulted France into the never-dreamt-of realms of football paradise). The captain of the French team, Zinedine Zidane, world footballer of the year and Marseille's ‘national’ idol, was of Kabyle origin. A large number of the other footballers similarly were second-generation Algerian (or West African) immigrants. The team had been heralded by most of the national press and the political establishment as the living representation of France's multi-cultural, but nevertheless distinctively French, identity. For the match, the newly constructed Stade de France, situated in one of the notoriously ‘Arab’ and notoriously ‘dangerous’ banlieues of Paris, was packed with young Algerians living in France and with beurs (second-generation North African emigrants). On the balcony reserved for the government delegation, the then French prime minister, Lionel Jospin, was watching.