This post was originally published on Politico.

France’s national soccer team has become an unlikely barometer for the country’s leading far-right party, whose leaders’ shifting rhetoric about the team reflects its broader attempts at moderation — from appeals around racial identity to working-class solidarity — and helps explain why the National Rally is now seen as having a genuine shot at the presidency after decades of falling short.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the party known during his lifetime as the National Front, became perhaps the most vocal domestic antagonist of France’s soccer team as it emerged as an international force in the 1990s. After the

Author: By Sasha Issenberg