President Chirac led the attempt to put the best gloss on a failure that was symbolised by Zidane’s expulsion 20 minutes into extra time after he head-butted an Italian player.

The red card for the captain and symbol of France’s moral revival created a sense of disbelief. “I don’t know what happened, but I would like to express admiration for the man who brought honour to sport and honour to France,” said M Chirac, who was in Berlin to watch the agonising defeat of his national team in a penalty shootout.

The President and French commentators were unanimous in forgiving Zidane, 34, the error that stained his last moments before retirement from professional football.

However, the tall, soft- spoken son of Algerian immigrants, did not turn up with the rest of the team to receive the runners-up award.

“Zizou, on t’aime”, said the message projected on the Arc du Triomphe, at the head of the Champs Elysées. It alternated with another message: “Merci les Bleus, vous restez nos heros”. (Thank you, the blues. You are still our heroes.)

Supporters in Paris were convinced that the Italians had inflicted some unspeakable insult against Zidane for him to have reacted with such violence.

Amid the disappointment, there was a strong feeling that, despite the defeat, Zidane and his men had pulled France out of its cycle of gloom over the past few years. Raymond Domenech, the French coach, insisted: “We didn’t lose. Penalty shots are the same thing as a draw.”

The sense of denial was shared among commentators and supporters who insisted that the state of grace brought about by the unexpected arrival in the World Cup final would endure the defeat. “A month ago, no one would have believed that we could get to the final and it was largely thanks to Zizou,” said the commentator on TF1. After a horrible year that included race riots and the loss of the 2012 Olympics to London, the arrival of les Bleus in the final has dragged the country from gloom to euphoria.

The belief that France can get something right has also been fuelled by the victory of Amélie Mauresmo at Wimbledon on Saturday and by Bruno Peyron, who on Thursday shaved nine hours off the four days and 17 hour record for sailing across the Atlantic.

Praise for Zidane had verged on idolatry with commentators calling him “Le Dieu”. Le Monde, the most sober newspaper in France, said: “We shall miss his elegance, his brilliant footwork and the subtlety of this footballing man.”

Zidane, who was born and raised in the poor housing estates of Marseilles, is an icon of Gallic achievement.

But, amid the exaltation of a second French World Cup final in eight years, he has also served to remind France of its failure to bring into the mainstream the children of immigrants from its former colonies.

Unlike in 1998, when the World Cup victory of France’s multi-ethnic team was celebrated as proof that the Republic had embraced its Arab and black citizens as equals, the euphoria of 2006 has tweaked a guilty conscience.

Four years after the fête of 1998, Jean-Marie Le Pen, of the National Front, came second to Jacques Chirac in the presidential elections, and last autumn hundreds of thousands of non-white French rampaged on the estates where the immigrants have been parked since the 1960s. Zidane and half the team last night came from those estates, where the Tricolour flies alongside the Algerian flag.

Zizou always refuses to talk politics, but other members of the team, notably Lilian Thuram, have used their celebrity as a platform for condemning discrimination and the failure of integration.

When M Le Pen repeated this year his attacks on a team he deems to be insufficiently French, Thuram, who grew up in the French island of Guadeloupe, said: “Long live France — not the one he wants, but the real one. Le Pen is not aware that there are black, blond and brown French people.” Residents of the ghettos say that nothing changed after the 1998 cheering about racial harmony.

Nevertheless, the scent of victory has applied a healthy jolt to a country that has been wallowing in gloom. Some pundits believe that the achievement of reaching the final could kick the country out of its losing mentality and help to restart the sputtering economy.

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