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Sport

24th Jul 2023

The French World Cup ad has gone viral and it might be the best thing you’ll ever see

Ellen Fitzpatrick

The French advert for the 2023 Women’s World Cup has gone viral and it is the best thing we’ve seen in a while.

The ad points out the gender bias in sport and has garnered millions of views on social media already.

The ad begins with highlights of what appears to be the men’s team, showing top players scoring huge goals as it cuts to crowds in pubs and at the matches cheering on their country.

The voiceover says: “Fantastic, what a beautiful team! This is the football we love!”

The video then fades to black as a message reading, “Only Les Bleus can give us these emotions. But that’s not them you’ve just seen,” appears on the screen.

It then rewinds back to the beginning but this time showing someone editing the footage, showing how they had placed the men’s faces over the women’s to make it appear as if it was men the entire time.

Showing an incredible level of editing, it then features the real highlights, proving that it was the women’s team playing the whole time.

“At Orange, when we support Les Bleus, we support Les Bleues,” it then reads, actively adding in the “E” to the final “Bleues”.

The ad was created by French mobile network Orange, with a spokesperson for the brand explaining why the ad was so important to make.

They told CNN: “For the majority of soccer fans (and that’s the problem), the general consensus is that ‘men’s soccer is better, faster, more interesting than women’s.’ We also know that soccer videos have a great success online.

“It was essential that during the first half of the video, viewers would think they were enjoying male actions and the only way to make believe that was to … reshape women into men!”

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