Laurie
Laurie may write about David Beckham, but her heart belongs to Les Bleus. Her biggest thrills in the past year came from watching the French guys play live in Paris. Twice. (Although the first time was the Scotland game. And the less said about that, the better.)
She lives in the Seattle area with a delightful family who enable her addiction, to the point of buying her a Zidane jersey for a recent birthday.
(Although if she’s being truthful, she might admit that she was the one who found it on Ebay. And it may have been purchased with her credit card. But she’s absolutely certain that the rest of the family were all sitting there at the table, smiling benevolently as she opened it.)
She also writes on The Offside, LA Galaxy Offside, and the France Page at World Cup Blog. You can reach her at laurie[at]theoffside[dot]com.
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Comments | Add your comment
By Kudd | August 22nd, 2008 at 7:54 am 
Thanks a ton for the work and the info. And yes, TV coverage is pitiful!
By ink | September 26th, 2008 at 10:58 am hi
By Larry | June 24th, 2009 at 2:12 pm Hi! I just read your article “Booing the National Anthem? France Says Next Time They’ll Take Their Ball and Go Home,” and since I can’t comment there I just wanted to note a couple things:
-The Stade de France is actually in Saint-Denis, an impoverished suburb north of Paris that is home to many immigrants and their children;
-France actually no longer has a liberal immigration policy. They tightened it considerably in 1974 and further in 1993. Last year only around 70,000 people immigrated to France.
-While France has a complicated relationship with its ex-colonies, I think it would be a mistake to view the booing as necessarily an offshoot of that. When France plays a black African ex-colony, there generally is no booing. This is an issue specifically concerning Arab immigrants. Incidentally, Arab immigrants have also booed the national anthems of the Netherlands and Sweden in recent years, despite the fact that those countries never colonized the Arab world and that their national anthems don’t contain warlike lyrics.
Posted from 
United States
