« L’Étoile de Giadinh: » Le football à Saigon dans les années 1920, entre loisir des élites et instrument d’émancipation nationale

Abstract

Early in the twentieth century, keen modernist Vietnamese elites copied the western model to reposition their country among the dominant nations. Some discovered football and used it to shape a new generation of patriots. The Étoile de Giadinh played a crucial role in this transformational process among the Vietnamese, both intellectually and physically; the political engagement shown by its guiding personalities, its innovative training methods, an array of sporting triumphs and the management of promotional tours throughout Indochina turned the club into a vector of sporting acculturation. In a much greater advance, in the 1920s this Saigon football club became a fully Indochinese model for compatriots seeking to break away from colonial tutelage. This article analyses the founders’ strategies for the football association to initiate the reversal of colonial hierarchy. A combination of activists and promoters of combined physical and intellectual emancipation, they incarnated the third phase of acculturation which we know as dominant otherness: the colonial hierarchy was overturned in favour of new Vietnamese elites in the footballing world. Through their victories the team members of L’Etoile de Giadinh showed that innate Vietnamese assets could help the nation to regain its independence. This football club thus became the matrix of a veritable cultural revolution, a universal and timely blend of well-being, sport and nationalism.