Enforced absence from the game is torture to any footballer. For Fabien Barthez, the past few months have been, in his own words, ”useless”. Strange months they have been, too.
The French goalkeeper has been serving a six-month suspension for spitting at a Moroccan referee, Abdellah El-Achiri, at the end of a friendly match between his club Marseille and Wydad Casablanca. It was one thing being sidelined for a long period at Manchester United because he was frozen out by Fergie, but this time he had nobody to blame but himself.
On Sunday, Barthez slid on his gloves, with purpose, for the first time since his liquid contretemps in February. His punishment, which included 10 community service missions in exchange for a reduced sentence, is up.
He kept a low profile, making no comment about his duties refereeing kids’ games and coaching underprivileged and handicapped players, until the media caught up with him at the end of his final stint earlier this month. Had the experience changed him? Barthez looked at the scribes as if they were lunatics.
No evidence of repentance. He muttered about being a macho guy, the implication being that these things happen if you are a real man. Anyone who expected him to apologise for spitting at an inept official, or go through a spiritual rebirth because of his community service, clearly underestimated Barthez’s self-styled toughness.
A veneer, perhaps. Deep down, he has felt like the victim, handed a super-sized punishment simply because he has one of the biggest reputations in French football. Would a no-name goalkeeper from a no-hope club have been dealt with so severely? At the time he was reprimanded, he said: ”Football is my passion, my life. I made a mistake and I must accept the consequences. But it’s too exaggerated. I think I will come back with even more desire.”
Barthez has always been a controversial figure, a maverick, a strange fish, but his foibles were generally indulged because he is France’s most garlanded goalkeeper. A vital character in the squad honoured as World and European champions in 1998 and 2000, and after Zinedine Zidane, the most iconic image from that period is of Laurent Blanc planting a smacker on Barthez’s bald head for luck.
Has the spitting affair sullied his reputation? General consensus is that he committed the crime, served the time, and people are fascinated to discover what kind of form the 34-year-old will be in. But for some, there is a racial undertone. Jose Pierre-Fanfan, captain of Paris St-Germain at the time of the scandal, wondered aloud if Barthez would have spat at a white referee. That sort of nuance doesn’t disappear easily.
His ban expired on the eve of the Marseille vs PSG match, which happens to be the most notorious and spiteful rivalry in France. A nice gentle one to get his eye back in. The 1-0 Marseille victory played out against a background of the PSG players’ bus being stoned outside the Velodrome and the visitors complaining about a strange smell in their dressing room.
For the past six months Barthez has been training like never before. When the squad were ordered to run, Barthez was out at the front. When they played practice matches, he hollered at his teammates and demanded an intense level of competition.
Anything less would have challenged the managerial goodwill that has put him back in the picture immediately. But Barthez returns to discover the goalkeeping landscape has changed in his absence.
Relieved as the French are to have qualified for the World Cup, Barthez’s return represents another headache for coach Raymond Domenech. Lyon’s Gregory Coupet excelled as the stand-in for Les Bleus, and now there is pressure about who deserves the gloves. The media are split, the fans are split and even the players are split (most of the old guard stick with Barthez, while the youngsters favour Coupet). Just to complicate matters, Barthez and Domenech dislike one another intensely.
Coupet will not return silently to the bench. ”I’ve tasted the cake and I want my part,” he said. ”Before now there wasn’t any real competition for the goalkeeping post. I like to think that now it exists.”
For a man with 74 caps to have to prove himself is unusual. Fortunately, Barthez has the backing of his manager — for now. Marseille coach Jean Fernandez says: ”Fabien will need a few matches to adapt, but he’s motivated and he’s ready physically, technically and mentally. He’s a competitor and a leader and he will recapture his place on and off the pitch.”
If he needs any further inspiration he might look at the example of fellow Frenchman Eric Cantona, whose lengthy ban for kicking a fan at Selhurst Park 10 years ago proved the springboard for the form of his life. — Â