ABSTRACT
A professional football league was established in France in 1932. From the first day, one of its deepest characteristics was, without any doubt, its multi-ethnic composition. If we consider a period of 50 years, football has always had a large attraction-potential for newcomers to France. The example of the first revelation of French football at international level, the third place at the Swedish World Cup in 1958, is symptomatic. The star of the national team was the Real Madrid winger Raymond Kopa. His partners included Maryan Wisnieski, Casimir Hnatow, Celestin Oliver, Roger Piantoni and Claude Abbès and one of the two coaches, Jean Snella, was born, the son of Polish miners, in Germany. All of them were second-generation immigrants. Kopa himself was born Raymond Kopaszewski to Polish parents in the miners’ district, in Noeux les Mines on the Belgian border, and received French citizenship at the age of 21 (Wahl, 1988; Rethacker, 1955).
