French and Spanish leaders condemn remarks before World Cup semifinal
France has rejected former Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s claim that its national football team had “no French players.”
The French Embassy in Spain said on Sunday that “all the players in the French national team are French,” noting that this also applied to the three members of the 26-man squad who were born abroad.
The response came after Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister from 2011 to 2018 and former leader of the centre-right Partido Popular (PP), wrote in an opinion piece for Spanish news website El Debate that France’s national team had no French players.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told French channel BFMTV that Rajoy’s comment was “absolutely unacceptable”.
