Soon after Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) thrashed Inter Milan five-nil to win the Champions League, Ousmane Dembélé urged fans not to go wild. ‘Let’s celebrate but without breaking everything in Paris,’ said the PSG striker.

His plea fell on deaf ears. Two have died, shops were looted, bus stops vandalised, cars torched and police attacked as Paris succumbed to an orgy of violence. The worst of the rioting was on the Champs-Élysées, where police come under fire from projectiles, including fireworks, and dozens of arrests were made. In total, 563 people were detained and the Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau labelled them ‘barbarians… who had come to commit crimes and provoke the forces of order.’

There is a new generation of thug running amok in French cities

He was criticised by his political opponents. The National Rally described what should have been an evening of joyous celebration as a ‘fiasco’ with Jordan Bardella accusing Retailleau of being unprepared for the riots. The left, on the other hand, charged the Interior Minister of ‘adding fuel to the fire’ by describing the yobs as ‘barbarians’.

There is a flaw to the left’s argument: namely, that this is not the first time Paris has been ransacked by football supporters. It happened only a few weeks ago after PSG beat Arsenal in the semi-final of the Champions League. On that occasion cars (including a police car) were burned, buses attacked and shops were looted.

It was a similar story in December 2022 when France beat Morocco in the World Cup semi-final. There was violence in several cities, notably Paris where the city’s local paper described scenes of ‘urban guerrilla warfare’.

When France won the 2018 World Cup there were more than 300 arrests in Paris and 45 police officers and gendarmes were injured as trouble erupted across the country.

Twenty years earlier, in 1998, France won the World Cup for the first time, and on home soil. It prompted one of the biggest street parties in French history as around 1.5 million Parisians celebrated on the Champs-Élysées. There was one unfortunate incident, when a female driver lost control of her car and injured revellers, but there was no wanton violence. As a BBC journalist remarked: ‘It really is the most extraordinary of scenes here… a great crowd of thousands and thousands of people, flags flying, horns blaring, fire crackers going off, chanting, applauding.’

My wife was one of them. She has never had any interest in football but she felt compelled to join the party in Paris because she was so proud of her country. 1998 was probably the high water-mark of French multiculturalism or what is known as ‘vivre-ensemble’(live together). ‘Unemployment was falling, the economy was performing well and France was winning,’ reflected the sports sociologist William Gasparini.

The golden age didn’t last long. The economy began to decline and so did the vivre-ensemble. As early as 2002 warnings were being sounded about the ‘Lost Territories of the Republic’, where mainly Muslim communities lived separate lives to the rest of the country. The ‘re-Islamisation’ of young French Muslims accelerated as the internet began to evolve and extremists used this new platform for propaganda.

YouTube – particularly effective in this regard – was launched in 2005, the same year thousands of youths rioted across France after two teenagers died in a police chase. The then Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, described the rioters as ‘scum’ and pledged to eradicate them for the ‘good people who want peace’.

He didn’t. Now there is a new generation of thug running amok in French cities. Many of those who have sacked Paris in recent weeks are not PSG fans. They are ‘thugs’ and ‘barbarians’ from the banlieues who take advantage of any large-scale gathering in a city – be it a May Day parade, a rally against pension reform or a football celebration – to display their contempt for all things French.

An editorial in Le Figaro on Sunday concluded that the previous night’s mayhem had nothing to do with football, rather: ‘It’s culture. Wanton destruction, violent assaults, slogans against the state, the police, Israel.’

This explains why there is never any violence at away matches involving France or PSG. The supporters who travel abroad are genuine fans who love their club and their country.

The troublemakers who go on the rampage in Paris do so because they hate France.