In the bustling world of those who follow today's football on set and at the microphone, Daniel Riolo is a character apart. Because with his white shirts and perfectly tailored suit jackets, he is the most elegant of all. Above all, because he doesn't mince his words and they hit the mark like no other. An attentive observer and incisive columnist on RMC, a scourge of weakness and ugly play in football, Daniel Riolo is currently following the Euro which is being played in all four corners of the continent. While France is emerging as the main favourite in the competition, the journalist talks about the pace of the game with Hast.
What's elegant about football?
First, it's the jersey you wear on the pitch. A jersey with tons of sponsors on it, and a bad design, is necessarily ugly. On the other hand, there are very beautiful jerseys, vintage ones with minimalist advertising that are like a souvenir, and it doesn't matter if there is something ridiculous there. Maradona's Napoli jersey from the 80s had a "Mars" or "Buitoni" logo, which is not the height of chic; Platini's Juventus had "Ariston", which is a brand of boiler. But it doesn't matter: the way everything was written on these jerseys made for a terribly classy design. In truth, it's a bit like license plates. The French ones have something ugly and the English ones, for some reason, have a more precious typography. I have also always had a soft spot for the jersey of the great Saint-Etienne from the late 70s. It is a refined jersey that gives its green color something powerful - whereas normally, I always find green very ugly. To be honest, I find that Italian jerseys have always been more beautiful than the others, and I am not just saying that because my parents are Italian. No, there is no jersey as beautiful as those of the transalpine clubs of the 80s. Because they have stripes, because the stripes are designed in a very particular way, because the cut is necessarily original.
Speaking of the Italian jersey, do you remember the one that the Squadra Azurra, the Italian national team, wore at Euro 2000?
I remember an image: the Italians dressed all in white with this tight jersey, like an undershirt, parading on the screen during the anthems of the final of this Euro, against France. It was extraordinary. In this team, there were only good-looking guys: Francesco Totti, Fabio Cannavaro, Stefano Fiore, Alessandro Nesta… But with these white jerseys, they were even more beautiful. It was like a fashion show. At the same time, I remember that in France, the AJ Auxerre club wore the same kind of outfit, supplied by the same equipment supplier, the Italian Kappa. Normally, we don't associate the Auxerre club with a certain idea of elegance, but here too, something was happening. Thanks to this very unique jersey, the players also seemed much more beautiful than they were in real life. On the pitch, Auxerre was real class, great style. It's no wonder the club's players said: "Since we got this jersey, we feel stronger."
Apart from the jersey, what touches you in a footballer?
I have always been a fan of players who are beautiful to look at as well as players who are not very attractive. What matters to me is not the reflection of a silhouette in a mirror. It is having character on the field. It is a question of aura, of charisma. In the 80s, the French team player Luis Fernandez was really not elegant with his socks rolled up over his shoes, but there was a real grace about him. Because he was authentic. He was a guy from the street, who ran in all directions, tackled constantly, and yelled at the referees. There was something very popular about that that I liked. Conversely, I like a very classy guy like the Italian Paolo Maldini, with this very particular way he had of taking care of his hair, and then also this other Italian, Roberto Baggio who played while dragging a magnificent melancholy, like a cursed player. Or the Argentinian Fernando Redondo, so elegant in his ball handling. I remember that during the 1998 World Cup, Daniele Passarella, the coach of the Argentinian national team, chose to do without Fernando Redondo because he had long hair and refused to cut it. It was so stupid that Passarella would deprive himself of a player like Redondo. How stupid. Passarella must have old memories of the Argentinian dictatorship. After all, it was General Varela who gave him the World Cup when he won it with Argentina in 1978.
You have always been critical of the style of play played by Didier Deschamps' French team. What exactly does it lack in terms of elegance?
Let's be clear: this is not elegant football. Les Bleus are not tailor-made. It's a one-size-fits-all football. Better yet: the football advocated by Didier Deschamps is a businessman's suit that you meet at Roissy, before boarding. The guy, afterwards, will go and sign nice contracts. It's effective. It's closely linked to Didier Deschamps' personality. He wants this French team to play like that, for victory and nothing else. As long as it works, we love it. You know, there are teams that we continued to love even when they lost, simply because they were beautiful to watch. This is the case of the 1982 French team that lost in the World Cup, against Spain. When Deschamps' team stops winning, we won't love it anymore.
How do you judge today's football in terms of what it gives off?
Today, there are some who are really very careful about who they are on the pitch, and even off it. Everything that the Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo does is calculated. He has had cosmetic surgery, he has a hairdresser who comes to his house every day, and he takes off his jersey to show off his abs whenever he can. It's more or less the same with the Brazilian Neymar, from PSG. The problem is that all of this rings false. Everything is manufactured, like in a reality TV show and, above all, everything is in bad taste, and this is gradually spreading everywhere, to all the teams, on all the pitches. We also observe a kind of athletic formatting in football. The players run a lot, they don't stop for a gesture. What counts, for the teams, for the matches, for the victory, is the number of kilometers covered on a pitch, and nothing else. This kind of football no longer allows the emergence of talented players who are out of time, like the Argentinian Juan Riquelme, who was always said to be slow. He was slow, but he was beautiful to watch.
There is one football character we have not yet spoken about in all this. And yet, he is so important. The coach…
The real style in football is not on the pitch, but on the sidelines, on the bench. It is the coaches who have the most to say about style. For a long time, Josep Guardiola, now at Manchester City, gave the impression that he went to a match as if he were going to a reception. With his suits and leather shoes, he was very chic. The same for the Portuguese coach José Mourinho, at least during the 2000s. Through our screen, we saw that his clothes were beautiful, that they were well cut, that he paid attention to everything. At a time when players pay a lot of attention to what they are, I am sure that they pay attention to what their coach represents, to the way he presents himself to them. A classy coach counts. At least as much as a training session. I am sure of it. Mourinho played a lot of that. When you have a classy coach, you are proud of him, you want to play for him, to work hard on the pitch, to live an adventure alongside him. In a recent interview, French coach Claude Puel explained that it is precisely this lack of style that has long worked against French coaches when it comes to selling themselves to the best clubs.
Listening to you talk about football, we sense a kind of nostalgia in you. Why?
The truth is that all football fans are nostalgic in one way or another, and it doesn't matter how old they are. It's a feeling that we all have inside us. We all think that things were better before. We are all convinced that today's football lacks something, a beauty, a madness... Football is a story of youthful emotions, above all. And youthful emotions are necessarily more beautiful.
What excites you about football today, anyway?
I like it when, from March, the big Champions League matches arrive. There is suspense, and it is great. Without realizing it, despite the accelerated modernity of things, despite video and the like, football retains a form of drama, which I like enormously. In football, Spring is an apotheosis with the home and away matches in the European Cup. Every year, I find myself vibrating in the same way, like when I was a kid. The same goes for the knockout matches of a Euro, after the group stages. These moments of tension, these reversals of situations, we must not be taken away from them. That is the beauty of football!