A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
France defeated Senegal in its first World Cup match on Tuesday 3-1. Les Bleus, as they are known, are one of the favorites to win the tournament. France reached four out of the last seven World Cup finals and won two of them, most recently in 2018. There are also more French players in this year's tournament - nearly a hundred - than players of any other nationality. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley tells us how that came to be.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking French).
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: This sports club on the eastern edge of Paris is teaming on a recent Wednesday afternoon as players big and little dash across the field. Paris-based journalist Simon Kuper writes on soccer. His latest book is "World Cup Fever: A Footballing Journey In Nine Tournaments." He says Western Europe plays the best soccer right now.
SIMON KUPER: The Western European countries play the fastest soccer. It's collective. It's one touch. And probably the best place in Western Europe is the largest city of Western Europe, Paris. The French are just very good at producing soccer talent.
BEARDSLEY: Kuper says it starts with getting millions of 6-year-olds out on the field because the only way to know who's going to be good is to let everybody play from a very young age. That's clearly being done here as tiny boys and girls excitedly kick the ball, pouring their hearts into their game.
BIJE CONTE: (Shouting in French).
BEARDSLEY: One coach screaming from the sidelines doesn't miss a thing. His gaze follows every darting youngster. Coach Bije Conte (ph) is so demanding, you'd think he was instructing teenagers, not 8-year-olds.
CONTE: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: "The younger you start, the better it is," he says. "You've got to do things fully and install a certain rigor from the beginning."
Twenty-year-old Conte started playing here at the age of 5. Now he's one of the principal coaches. He says a lot of the youngsters dream of being stars, and a few might make it.
CONTE: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: "Many of them have talent," he says, "but it's better not to let it explode too soon. You got to make it shine with time. You have to polish talent like a jewel."
CONTE: (Speaking French).
UNIDENTIFIED SOCCER PLAYER #1: (Speaking French).
UNIDENTIFIED SOCCER PLAYER #2: (Speaking French).
CONTE: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Conte gathers the little players around him for a post-practice pep talk, urging them to stay concentrated as they stare up at him in reverence.
About 12 million people live in Paris and its suburbs. Many hail from recent immigrant backgrounds. That's reflected in the French national team with stars like Kylian Mbappe, whose mother is Franco-Algerian and his father from Cameroon. It also helps explain the large number of French players in the World Cup, says sports writer Kuper.
KUPER: A lot of the players who are not good enough to play for France then end up playing for the country of their parents, be that Algeria or Cameroon, Senegal or Morocco. So there's huge numbers of players who'll be playing for African countries this World Cup who are really French and typically from Paris.
SAMMY RESGI: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Eight-year-old goalkeeper Sammy Resgi (ph) has just finished his practice under the rigorous gaze of coach Conte.
SAMMY: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: "It's a little bit hard," he says, "and sometimes I'm tired. But when we see we're losing, we push and push, and then we come back, and we can tie or even win."
Sammy, like many kids here, says he's rooting for two teams in this World Cup.
SAMMY: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: "France and Algeria," he says, from where his father, who's been watching from the stands, emigrated many years ago.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
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