It was the only goal of the game: the French team, the favorite to retain the Cup, was almost comically inept, not only in that match but in two subsequent matches, against Uruguay and Denmark, and it went home a couple of weeks earlier than expected, without having scored even once, despite the presence of top strikers from the English, Italian, and French leagues in its squad. The first goal in the 2002 World Cup was scored by Papa Bouba Diop, of Senegal, against France, after Petit unintentionally and inelegantly bounced the ball off his own goalkeeper to present Diop with an easy opportunity. Looks, talent, money, and freakish good fortune-no wonder so many schoolboys aspire to be footballers, when players like Petit seem to live out every schoolboy’s dream. A few days after parading through the streets of Paris on an open-topped bus in front of hundreds of thousands of his adoring countrymen, he wandered into a casino and won more than twenty thousand dollars on a one-armed bandit. Petit now had a World Cup winners’ medal, football’s biggest prize, to add to his haul.
Petit, like several of his compatriots, played his club football in England, with the London team Arsenal (the national teams pick the very best club players, no matter where they earn a living), and, just weeks before the Brazil game, Arsenal had won the English championship and the Football Association Cup.
It was France’s third goal in an improbably easy 3-0 victory over the perennial favorite, Brazil. The last goal in the 1998 World Cup was scored by Emmanuel Petit, a blond, muscular, ponytailed, and irritatingly good-looking midfielder for the host nation, France.
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