In the bustling world of those who discuss today’s football in the studio and on air, Daniel Riolo is a figure apart. Because with his white shirts and perfectly tailored suit jackets, he is the most elegant of them all. Above all, because he does not mince his words, and they hit home like no one else's. A keen observer and incisive commentator on RMC, a scourge of softness and ugly football, Daniel Riolo is following the Euro being played across the continent these days. As France emerges as the competition's leading favourite, the journalist talks to Hast about the style of the game.
What is elegant about football?
First of all, it comes down to the shirt worn on the pitch. A shirt covered in sponsors, with poor design, is inevitably ugly. On the other hand, there are some very beautiful vintage shirts with minimalist advertising that feel like a memory, and it does not matter if there is something ridiculous about them. Maradona’s Napoli shirt in the 1980s had a « Mars » or « Buitoni » logo, which is hardly the height of chic; Platini’s Juventus had « Ariston », a boiler brand. But it does not matter: the way everything was written on those shirts made for an incredibly classy design. In truth, it is a bit like number plates. French ones are rather ugly, while English ones, for some reason, have a more refined typeface. I have also always had a soft spot for the shirt of the great Saint-Etienne side of the late 1970s. It is a clean-lined shirt that gives its green colour something powerful — whereas normally, I always find green very ugly. To be honest, I think Italian shirts have always been more beautiful than the others, and I do not say that only because my parents are Italian. No, there are no shirts as beautiful as those of the transalpine clubs of the 1980s. Because they have stripes, because the stripes are drawn in a very particular way, because the cut is inevitably original.
Speaking of Italian shirts, do you remember the one worn by the Squadra Azzurra, the Italian national team, at Euro 2000?
I remember an image: the Italians dressed all in white in those tight-fitting shirts, like undershirts, appearing on screen during the anthems before the final of that Euro against France. It was extraordinary. In that team, there were only handsome guys: Francesco Totti, Fabio Cannavaro, Stefano Fiore, Alessandro Nesta... But in those white shirts, they were even more handsome. It was like a fashion show. Around the same time, I remember that in France, AJ Auxerre wore the same kind of kit, supplied by the same Italian manufacturer, Kappa. Normally, you do not associate Auxerre with a certain idea of elegance, but there too, something was happening. Thanks to that unique shirt, the players also seemed much more handsome than they really were. On the pitch, Auxerre was pure class, great style. It is no surprise that the club's players said: « Since we have had this shirt, we feel stronger. »
Aside from the shirt, what moves you about a footballer?
I have always been a fan of players who are beautiful to watch, as well as players with no style. What matters to me is not the reflection of a silhouette in a mirror. It is having character on the pitch. It is a question of aura, of charisma. In the 1980s, France player Luis Fernandez was not at all elegant with his socks rolled over his boots, but there was a real grace about him. Because he was authentic. He was a streetwise guy, running everywhere, constantly tackling and shouting at referees. There was something very popular about him that I liked. Conversely, I like a very classy guy such as the Italian Paolo Maldini, with his very particular way of paying attention to his hair, and then there was another Italian, Roberto Baggio, who played with a magnificent melancholy, like a cursed player. Or the Argentinian Fernando Redondo, so elegant in the way he carried the ball. I remember that during the 1998 World Cup, Daniele Passarella, coach of the Argentinian national team, chose to do without Fernando Redondo because he had long hair and refused to cut it. It was so stupid for Passarella to deprive himself of a player like Redondo. What nonsense. Passarella must have had old memories of the Argentinian dictatorship. After all, it was General Varela who presented him with the World Cup when he won it with Argentina in 1978.
You have always been critical of the football played by Didier Deschamps’s French team. What does it lack in terms of elegance, exactly?
Let us be clear: this is not elegant football. Les Bleus are not bespoke. It is run-of-the-mill football. Better still: the football advocated by Didier Deschamps is like a businessman’s suit you see at Roissy before boarding. Afterwards, the guy will go and sign some fine contracts. It is effective. It is intimately linked to Didier Deschamps’s personality. He wants this French team to play like that, for victory and nothing else. As long as it works, we like it. You know, there are teams we continued to love even when they lost, simply because they were beautiful to watch. That was the case with the French team of 1982, which lost in the World Cup against Spain. When Deschamps’s team stops winning, we will stop loving it.
How do you assess the football of today in terms of what it conveys?
Today, there are some players you can see pay a great deal of attention to who they are on the pitch, and even off it. Everything Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo does is calculated. He has had cosmetic surgery, a hairdresser who comes to his home every day, and he takes off his shirt to show his abs whenever he can. It is more or less the same with Brazilian Neymar of PSG. The problem is that all of this rings false. Everything is manufactured, as in a reality TV show and, above all, it is all in poor taste, gradually spreading everywhere, across every team and every pitch. We also see a kind of athletic standardisation in football. Players run a huge amount; they do not stop for a gesture. What matters for teams, for matches, for victory, is the number of kilometres covered on a pitch, and nothing else. That kind of football no longer allows the emergence of timelessly talented players such as Argentinian Juan Riquelme, who was always said to be slow. He was slow, but he was beautiful to watch.
There is one figure in football we have not yet talked about in all this. And yet, he is so important. The coach...
True style in football is not on the pitch, but at its edge, on the touchline. It is the managers who have the most to say on the subject of style. For a long time, Josep Guardiola, now at Manchester City, gave the impression that he went to matches as one goes to a reception. With his suits and leather shoes, he was very chic. The same went for Portuguese manager José Mourinho, at least during the 2000s. Through our screens, you could see that his clothes were beautiful, well cut, that he paid attention to everything. At a time when players pay a great deal of attention to who they are, I am certain they pay attention to what their manager represents, to the way he presents himself to them. A classy manager matters. At least as much as a training session. I am certain of it. Mourinho made a great deal of use of that. When you have a classy manager, you are proud of him; you want to play for him, give everything on the pitch, live an adventure alongside him. In a recent interview, French manager Claude Puel explained that it was precisely this lack of style that had long worked against French managers when trying to sell themselves to the best clubs.
Listening to you talk about football, one senses a certain nostalgia in you. Why?
The truth is that all football fans are nostalgic in one way or another, whatever their age. It is a feeling we all carry within us. We all think things were better before. We are all convinced that today’s football lacks something, a beauty, a madness... Football is above all a story of youthful emotions. And youthful emotions are inevitably more beautiful.
What excites you about football today, then?
I love it when the big Champions League matches arrive from March onwards. There is suspense, and it is wonderful. Despite the accelerated modernity of things, despite video technology and all that, football retains a form of drama that I love enormously. In football, spring is an apotheosis, with the home and away matches in European competition. Every year, I find myself thrilled in the same way as when I was a kid. The same goes for the knockout matches at a Euro, after the group stages. We must not be deprived of those moments of tension, those turnarounds. That is the beauty of football!