‘Let’s all get behind Les Bleus for victory!’ tweeted Emmanuel Macron shortly before France and Morocco met last night in Qatar in the semi-final of the World Cup. ‘Without ever forgetting that sport brings us together above all in the respect and friendship between our two nations.’

A worthy sentiment from the president but not everyone listened: certainly not some of the Moroccan fans in the Al Bayt Stadium, who greeted the playing of the La Marseillaise with a cacophony of whistling.

As for the match itself, the French did to Morocco what they had done to England in the quarter-final, punishing the profligacy of their opponents with two clinical strikes in a pulsating contest. That the Moroccan players looked a little nervous was perhaps to be expected; the pressure on their shoulders was huge what with the pre-match hype about the significance of their being the first Arab nation to reach a World Cup semi-final.

This World Cup has, to paraphrase Emmanuel Macron, brought French and Moroccan fans together

As Issandr El Amrani put it in the New York Times, Morocco’s superb performances in Qatar ‘captures a special moment for Moroccans and many others from the Arab world and beyond’.

Many neutrals, whether they were watching in Cairo, Carlisle or Canberra would have been rooting last night for the underdog Moroccans, although they wouldn’t have seen it in the same light as El Amrani, ‘a tale of global south revanchism against former colonial powers and historic adversaries’.

For most Moroccan fans it was a football match and had nothing to do with the fact their country was a French Protectorate from 1912 to 1954; but a minority in France used it as an excuse to create mayhem. In Paris there were over 100 arrests, while in Nice there were scenes that the local paper described as ‘urban guerrilla warfare’; there were also confrontations in Montpellier and Cannes. In other cities, such as Toulouse and Nantes, the atmosphere was festive as fans of both nations watched the match side by side.

None of the violence would have surprised the police. One officer had predicted to Le Figaro that ‘there will be incidents whether Morocco loses or wins’, and another had explained why: ‘In addition to Morocco, the entire Maghreb community intends to take advantage of this event to exalt the pride of the Arab world.’

My Moroccan greengrocer had alluded to this when we chatted about the match at the start of the week. He claimed that some of the thugs smashing shops and burning cars in Paris were Algerians, exploiting Morocco’s success to cause trouble.

Yobs haven’t been the only ones to exploit Morocco’s run to the semi-final; Eric Zemmour, leader of the French far-right Reconquest party, has been critical of French-Moroccans cheering for the country of their ancestors. ‘I just think it’s weird that there are people who are supposedly French who are celebrating Morocco’s victory on the day that France also won,’ he said.

It isn’t the only thing Zemmour finds weird about football; in an interview on Sunday he expressed his surprise at ‘the fact that there are 8 or 9 players of African or black origin in the French team…if there were nine white people in the Senegalese team, the Senegalese would be asking themselves…’

Who knows, perhaps Zemmour’s remarks – and those of one of his associates, Damien Rieu, who called the semi-final as a ‘clash of Civilisations’ – encouraged some of the far-fight gangs who appeared last night. In Lyon about 60 young men roamed the streets ‘looking for trouble’, some of them chanting ‘Blue, White, Red, France for the French’. In Paris, 5,000 police were deployed and among those they intercepted were 40 armed far-fight hoodlums who, according to authorities, ‘clearly wanted to fight on the Champs [-Élysées]’.

These are a minority, just as the yobs draped in Moroccan flags are unrepresentative of their supporters. Overall, this World Cup has, to paraphrase Emmanuel Macron, brought French and Moroccan fans together in France. Football is what interests in them, not the actions or words of mindless thugs and politicians.

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