Paris was a city divided tonight, not by the barricades that once lined its boulevards, but by a more modern fault line: the aftermath of a football match. PSG’s victory, a sporting achievement worthy of celebration, has instead become a mirror reflecting the deep fractures within French society. On one side, the jubilant crowds, flags aloft, chanting in the streets—a tableau of collective joy that would have made the Romans proud.
On the other, the heavy presence of riot police, the cordons, the skirmishes. This is not merely a sporting event; it is a symptom of our age. We have become a nation that cannot even enjoy a win without the shadow of discord.
It is the fall of a different kind of empire, the erosion of civil society. When victory triggers not unity but confrontation, we must ask: what have we become? The intellectual decadence of our leaders, who speak of grandeur while the streets burn, is a tragedy in the making.
National identity, once forged in the crucible of shared triumphs, now dissolves in the solvents of division. Paris, the eternal city of light, flickers tonight between celebration and the abyss. The only question is which will prevail.
