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Le Pen daughter slams mixed France side

Other News Materials 3 June 2010 17:50 (UTC +04:00)
Twelve years after right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen said the France football team was too ethnically mixed for his taste, his daughter, Marine, declared the side to be not sufficiently French.
Le Pen daughter slams mixed France side

Twelve years after right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen said the France football team was too ethnically mixed for his taste, his daughter, Marine, declared the side to be not sufficiently French, DPA reported.

A number of the French players "have a different nationality at heart" than France and "wrap themselves in other flags," Le Pen told BFM television on Thursday.

"The way things are, I admit that I do not particularly recognize myself in this team," she said.

Marine Le Pen is the current vice president of the far right-wing National Front, and is expected to succeed her father as head of the party when he retires.

In 1998, Jean-Marie Le Pen attacked France coach Aime Jacquet for picking black players and slammed some of these players - such as Marcel Desailly, Bernard Lama, Christian Karembeu and Patrice Loko - for not singing their national anthem.

He also claimed that "foreign" players could not have the same passion for France as naturally born Frenchmen.

France won the World Cup in 1998. The side is not expected to do as well this year.

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