From the Skylight to the CAN, street football between emancipation and commodification

The suburbs influence Paname, Paname influences the world.

The day before the Paris prefecture's demonstration of impotence, featuring the Stade de France security teams on the sidelines of the Champions League final, a tournament was held to celebrate more glorious local know-how: the Ile-de-France street football.

"A big event to show that we have the biggest nuggets in the world", as tweeted Walid Achechour, voice of After Foot and instigator of the Grand Paris tournament.

The principle ?

Eight teams - one per department - of five players (and two substitutes) competed on the ZZ 10 playground, in Saint-Denis for places for Liverpool-Real, in a very underground atmosphere with the blessing of Adidas and under the eyes of Zinedine Zidane himself.

🚨 New video from the Socios Club!

⚡️ We were at the Adidas Grand Paris Finale 2022 event, with Zidane!

👉 The entire moment of madness at 6 p.m. here: https://t.co/HiCtAinLJo pic.twitter.com/xSfdj3ndsj

– The Club of 5 (@LeClubDes_5) May 29, 2022

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A few days earlier, Prime Video announced the broadcast on its platform of the final of the National Neighborhoods Cup (July 2 in Créteil).

The culmination of a phenomenon born in Créteil three years earlier on the occasion of the African Cup of Nations, the now well-known neighborhood CAN.

An appellation which no longer had any place to be, according to Moussa Sow (no link), figure of the tournament and employee of the Red Cross in real life.

“We renamed it because the name CAN belongs to CAF.

So we decided to make our French Cup neighborhoods.

In 2019, it was the CAN because there was the real CAN, there, it's a World Cup year, so we are expanding.

It also allowed us to naturally integrate the French team but also communities like Portugal or Italy, for which there was demand.

A marriage of convenience with the big brands

Halfway through the timeline of the buzz, the Evry skylight has also grown significantly.

From a Santiago de Compostela for soccer players, see the arrival of Nenê in the Pyramids district, the most famous window in Île-de-France has turned into an entrepreneurial adventure incubated at Station F (13th arrondissement from Paris).

And she travels in turn.

Recently seen at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, or even at the Stade de France, the mobile replica of the skylight has been touring France since October 2021.

"We shouldn't selfishly keep all that in Évry, declared Mala, one of the two partners to have made the project fruitful at France Bleu, we wanted to share these values ​​throughout France.

“And then take a small ticket, as long as you do: three rental packs are available from 4,500 euros for cities or individuals who would like to rent it.

A nice sum, even if the instigators of the project are still struggling to get paid.

He was king at the Parc des Princes

He was king at the Louis II stadium

Nene came to the Skylight this afternoon

The rest in pictures 🙌 pic.twitter.com/UXDXlQJ8mo

– The Official Window (@LalucarneOff) December 8, 2021

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The common denominator of the three “urban” adventures, the big brands continue to exploit a vein whose source dates back to Kylian Mbappé's stadium in Bondy and Paul Pogba's playground of possibilities in Roissy-en-Brie (Adidas).

The brand with the three stripes boasted at the time “a place of sharing, of social bond for the local communities and the associations which will use it to encourage the practice of a more inclusive and egalitarian game.

“If the private initiative is welcomed by the street, in particular because it allows unparalleled media exposure – the skylight made its cameo in a pub featuring Lionel Messi – it also cages the transversality of these initiatives.

Moussa Sow:

“There are positives and negatives.

It will open the door to a lot of young people to undertake.

But do they really have their hands on this stuff?

Are the brands telling them what to do?

Nike brought us jerseys but tomorrow if I want to bring the guys from La Lucarne I can't, because it's Adidas [conversely, La Lucarne took part in the Grand Paris tournament, housed in the same boat] C is too restrictive.

Above all, these brands must not eat us away.

It must be win-win.

Partner with us, and help us.

»

Merchandising and professionalism

In this idea, the National Neighborhoods Cup is working with one of its sponsors, Heetch, by setting up VTC (Touring Vehicle with Driver) training for young people and by putting them in contact with other companies.

“These partnerships need to make sense.

» Associate Professor of Physical Education and author of

, Maxime Travers however regrets an “economic recovery” of street football.

“The skylight is a fantastic idea and it's a shame that this object goes from a use value to a market value.

It is even very serious.

»

Added to the commodification of street football is a form of professionalization.

To select their guys, the team captains of the Grand Paris tournament acted as scouts and coaches for a month.

Nicolas, alias Booska Colombien, was one of them: "I organized a five in the 92. To sort it out, I published a link leading to a form and encouraged people who were interested to apply for this detection.

Depending on the boxes filled (amateur, pro, semi pro), we sorted.

We called 20, 25 people for the detections, I watched them play, until we cleared 7 players.

Ditto for the National District Cup, with a minimum number of players from Créteil, with the aim of not distorting the basic idea.

"Real recruiters who come to the neighborhood CAN"

For Maxime Travert, low-rise football is necessarily disguised as soon as it is supervised, because it loses all its spontaneity outside the context of neighborhood life.

“In the cities, we oppose each other in order to settle down, to exist and to give meaning and consistency to our existence for the duration of a game.

We get bored, we get bored, we have a game of football and we have the impression of existing [it is precisely in this way that the Skylight was born].

In competition, on the contrary, we oppose each other in order to win, and what gives meaning to all the events organized is the result.

There are two registers of practices.

We deviate from the very essence of street football: the duel, elegantly eliminating an adversary of circumstances.

At La Courneuve, I had kids who, instead of scoring when they arrived in front of the goal, waited for the defender to come back to eliminate him.

The player who best illustrates this idea not always compatible with the very high level frame being Hatem Ben Arfa.

»

This “at risk” profile nevertheless appeals more and more to scouts, especially Spanish ones who see in the neighborhood CAN an opportunity to unearth a talent that has passed under the radar.

Sow: “From the quarter-finals, you have real recruiters who come.

Because the pool of Ile-de-France is infinite, and some struggle in real clubs.

»

"Municipalities must make street football survive"

Passing through Evry and a “lucky” scorer during his pilgrimage to the Skylight, the mayor of Poissy Karl Olive says he has encouraged the young people of the Pyramids in this direction and is satisfied to see that the latter “have managed to shape themselves and remain actors in their lives thanks to one of their ideas”.

Not insignificant in an environment where the aim of the game is to leave the city to emancipate oneself.

But while the idea of ​​reclaiming their own cage in an attempt to force open its doors is important, suburbanites would like to be less alone in their escape enterprise.

Cities are particularly expected at the turn by all the actors of these epiphenomena, who take advantage of their new scope to influence local policies.

With the pious wish of giving a second wind to urban sports infrastructures.

Nicolas de

:

“Municipalities must make street football survive, it is the best training center in France.

But today, fewer and fewer young people go downstairs to play football.

Society has changed, there are networks, yes.

But there is also the arrival of these super-clean "five" (five-a-side football) that make you want to play, except that they are not accessible to everyone.

I can do a "five" with friends, but a young kid can't, and the young kid doesn't want to break his knees playing on the concrete when he sees other people having fun on the pitches all clean.

The municipalities must make the effort to put back a little budget, the beautiful synth of the beautiful grids, new cages for the city-stadiums which make our little ones want to play and go down as before.

»

Aiming for the ground floor, maybe they'll reach the skylight.

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• Soccer

• Suburb

• Évry

• Creteil

• Ile-de-France

• Paris

• Sport

• Mark