PARIS: Football fever has gripped the French capital and sales of the national team’s football shirts are surging ahead of the World Cup final.

Fans thronged stores on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees and the capital’s Republique area to buy replica shirts bearing the names of team’s stars such as Kylian Mbappe and N’Golo Kante. “We’ve had loads of orders for shirts and we’ve practically sold them all already,” said a manager at the NSH Football store in Paris. “There have been a lot of orders for Mbappe and Kante shirts.”

Others found novel ways to mark the World Cup. Parisian baker Didier Lavry who runs the Petit Mitron boulangerie made a special ‘Tricolore’ cake while the dark-blue shirts of ‘Les Bleus’ could be seen in the bars and cafes as Paris prepared for a bumper weekend.

Published in Dawn, July 14th, 2018