The singer Lâam, a fellow Tunisian-originating French citizen, was booed when she sang her version of the Marseillaise. The 21-year-old midfielder was reproached for choosing to play for the French side rather than the Tunisian team, who represent the country which his parents originate from.

One could also say, of all the players, the one who has been booed at the most is Hatem Ben Arfa. Both the French team’s position after being defeated (by both Netherlands and Italy) on their way out of Euro 2008 and the contested behaviour of Raymond Domenech as manager of the national side, have certainly encouraged spectators of all kinds to whistle. However, surveys done after the match have shown that there were differing reasons for this behaviour. Yet as William Nuytens, a sociologist specialising in the behaviour of sports supporters, is quoted as saying in French daily Le Monde on 15 October, ‘the stadium is one of those rare places where one can still publicly protest.’ Whistling the Marseillaise allows some people to express their unhappiness. The total absence of elected members who are immigrants does not encourage integration of those who feel neither French when they are in France nor African when they are in Africa. The few members of government who come from these ‘visible minorities’ represent a step in the right direction in terms of changing ways of thinking, but there is a real lack of representatives of these groups of immigrants in the upper echelons of the state. In the last thirty years a real social fracture has gradually begun to appear and the origins of these French-born or –adopted individuals are often referred to as a way of explaining their difficulty to integrate. These troubled populations often live grouped together, far from the heart of the city. The young people from the suburbs, where many North African families live, experience high rates of unemployment and suffer from marginalisation.

In the first place, these whistles are a reminder of the riots in autumn 2005. After a meeting organised the day after the match by president Nicolas Sarkozy, the youth and sports minister Roselyne Bachelot announced that all matches at which the Marseillaise were whistled would be stopped in order to allow enough time for any ministers present to leave the venue. Obviously, these whistles have led to reactions from French politicians from all sides, firstly the secretary of state for sport and former French rugby coach, Bernard Laporte, who quickly announced that one solution could be to no longer play against these teams in Paris. It already happened in October 2001 against Algeria, and in November 2007 during a match versus Morocco. What is less understandable, however, are the booing whistles which accompany the French national anthem each time that one of these teams plays in Paris. It is understandable that these people, when they have the chance to see their country's team, arrive en masse. In fact, l'Île-de-France welcomes a large community of people originally from Africa - be it economic immigrants who have come to work in France, their French-born children and grandchildren or others who have come to be reunited with their French-based families. Like every time the Blues welcome a North African, former French colony (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) to Paris, the visiting fans were as numerous as those of the host country. On 15 October, the French football team welcomed Tunisia to the Stade de France. It's a problem which says a lot about society in general Nowadays, only the song’s third verse is used as the national anthem of Germany, and it says that “unity and law and freedom are the foundation for happiness”.Will revolution soon hit the grandstands of France? After the Marseillaise was booed during a match against Tunisia in October, several politicians expressed their rage. Although the lyrics were written in 1841, previous to the country’s initial union in 1871, the first stanza was linked to the Nazi regime and has so been illegally banned. It is officially made the German national anthem in 1922 throughout the Weimar Republic it was applied to West Germany after the World War II and has been employed in part by a united Germany since the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1990. If you are interested in the story, here you will find the best top 10 national anthems. However, it is agreeable that all the anthems are expression of a country’s feelings and timeline. Others have motivating words and praising phrases to the ruler or the country. These national songs may include some of the country’s history, some of its aspirations. Countries intend to create their own national anthems.