As part of our Language of Soccer World Cup series, The Athletic is speaking to supporters of all 48 nations competing at the 2026 edition to capture their unique football culture, distilled into a single phrase. You can read the articles in one place here.Allez les Bleus – Come on the BluesAllez les Bleus is a chant in the truest sense of the word.It is short, simple and impossible to forget: the repetition of just three words, four syllables and two notes. Musically, it is an example of what is known as a perfect fourth, descending and ascending. Lyrically, it gets straight to the point. Come on the Blues.The effect, when it is sung in unison by a crowd of 80,000 people, is akin to a kind of incantation. It is not rhythmically dynamic or thematically powerful. But it resonates, over and over again, like a sacred mantra.“Allez les Bleus for me is more than a slogan. It’s like breathing,” says Matthias Timsit, a 44-year-old France fan and member of the Irresistibles Francais supporters’ group.“You know how you breathe all the time without realising? It’s the same thing for me during a France game: I repeat it for 90 minutes, and sometimes more, without even realising.”Regardless of the chant’s fundamental simplicity, France supporters say it still has the power to move them.“Sometimes I get goose bumps singing Allez les Bleus,” says 56-year-old Denis Gosset, who attends matches with his sons, Yohan and Baptiste.“I remember chanting it during the final of the 2018 World Cup. We were all watching it on a big screen at UrbanSoccer in Nanterre, but we felt like we were with our friends who were out there in Russia. It’s the only chant that can wake up an entire stadium.”A France fan shows their support for the team at Euro 2016 (Philippe Desmazes/AFP via Getty Images)Somewhat unusually, for a popular football chant, it is possible to pinpoint the exact date on which supporters of the French national team first began singing Allez les Bleus: Wednesday, November 17, 1976.In the spring of that year, French football fans were held spellbound by the exploits of Saint-Etienne, a dazzling team from a provincial mining town in south-east-central France, who pulled off a series of remarkable results en route to the European Cup final.Saint-Etienne were known as Les Verts due to their green shirts and their fans would urge the team on by chanting ‘Allez les Verts!’.The players received fan mail worthy of pop stars, while a song called Allez les Verts, opportunistically penned by singer-songwriter Jacques Monty, sold four million copies and stayed at number one in France for a month.When Les Verts arrived in Glasgow for the final against Bayern Munich, which they would lose 1-0, they were accompanied by a green tide of 25,000 travelling fans. It was the first time such a phenomenon had been witnessed in French football.Prior to France’s next home game the following November — a World Cup qualifier against the Republic of Ireland at the Parc des Princes — L’Equipe journalist Jacques Ferran encouraged the team to take their cue from Saint-Etienne.