«ONLY THE BIRTH OF MY CHILDREN IS CLOSE TO WHAT I FELT IN THE WORLD CUP FINAL» - Emmanuel Petit

Emmanuel Petit, a former Arsenal player, left his name in history by scoring one of the goals with which France defeated Brazil in the 1998 World Cup final. This is the account of the day of glory for the French, written by Petit himself.

«The day France won the 1998 World Cup I woke up very confident and calm. Over the course of the tournament, the squad stayed on stage at Clairefontaine and, especially that morning, the atmosphere was fantastic. There was a castle and a forest nearby and the first thing I did was to open the curtains, take a deep breath and absorb all that fantastic landscape. To get away from stress and focus, I decided not to turn on the television, the radio or read newspapers. During the breakfast of the team neither was spoken of the game. Most of my companions were as relaxed as I was.

I do not want to be misunderstood, but by going to the final, we had already gotten farther than any French team in its history. This brought some serenity to the group, not because we felt the work was already done but because we knew the dream was very close.

Although we are a team, each player has his personal way of focusing for these moments. It has to do with personality, the way we deal with stress, ... When we went out to the stadium, there were people everywhere. They filled the streets with hundreds of cars to whistle, bicycles, people climbing trees. It was crazy. They were behind us all the way, which lasted about an hour. Small villages stopped completely to watch us pass. People waved, jumped, shouted to encourage us. No one imagines the feeling of who is on the bus to see this. I shudder at the thought.
We knew we were on a mission, something bigger than football. The audience support was incredible throughout the tournament. Even people who did not like football, or did not realize it, were fascinated. We touched the heart of France.

Before the game we heard the rumors about the limitations of Ronaldo Phenomenon, but they had so many players of great level that we could not focus on that. We controlled the game but we were not creating many chances of goal, Brazil was dangerous and we knew that well. The game was tied. But we managed to score at the half-hour mark and we knew that, as we were consistently defensively, scoring the first goal was vital.

Those who play against Brazil know that they have a weak team spirit. If things are not going well, they easily forget that they are a team and insist on individual moves. They began to shoot from everywhere, they were desperate and they insulted each other during the game.

In our lives, every day we look for reasons to get out of bed every morning. I can say that I think I've been in the right place at the right time: to be seen by billions of people scoring a goal in the World Cup final. Only the birth of my children comes close to what I felt at that moment. Life is this. I was lucky. "