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DPA
Paris
The streets of Paris filled with chanting, shouting crowds on Sunday after the country's football team beat Croatia 4-2 to win the World Cup for the second time after 1998.
At the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where an official fan zone had reached its 90,000 capacity almost three hours before kick-off, there was a sea of tricolour flags.
"We are the champions," the massed crowd chanted, as smoke bombs went off in the country's red, white and blue colours.
On the Champs-Elysees, cordoned off by police for celebrations, supporters climbed atop bus stations and kiosks, also setting off smoke bombs and yelling:"We are the French."
In the Latin Quarter, spontaneous processions erupted from bars and pubs and set off through the narrow streets singing the Marseillaise the French national anthem to join a street party in a nearby square.
Beer sprayed everywhere as drinkers danced in the streets."No need to pinch yourself to believe it," sports newspaper L'Equipe wrote."This Sunday, the French team has indeed written a new page in its history."
President Emmanuel Macron, whose delight had been evident as he watched the match in Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium, told RMC radio over the phone that when he met the players before their trip to Russia, he had asked them"for one thing... A second star."
"And I am very proud, very proud of them, and I'm going to tell them," Macron said.
"They are eternal, and Didier Deschamps a little more so than the others," newspaper Le Parisien wrote of the French team and its coach.
"This is the championship of mastery, even if something was lacking at times against an opponent who posed more problems than had been expected," L'Equipe conceded.
But in Paris, it was time for celebration, not analysis, as cars and motorbikes sped through the streets with young fans seated on the windowframes or even in one case hanging out of the boot, cheering and making victory signs.
They were mobbed at traffic lights by crowds of supporters, some of whom had resurrected long-hidden vuvuzelas and looked set to party well into the night.
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16/07/2018
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