My introduction to les banlieues of Paris came 50 years ago when I was accepted in an internship program that took me to St. Denis.
I did not know a lot of French — my French consisted of a couple of college classes and what I picked up, devouring L’Equipe and France Football, which I had recently discovered at the newsstand Hotalings in Times Square — but once I arrived from New York my French hosts couldn’t easily send me back home, so they found work for me.
One of the first tasks at the offices of the car parts manufacturer where I worked was moving boxes of old files to a warehouse in neighboring St. Ouen. Someone gave me the keys to a car and told me to drive there. My French was not then good enough to say I didn’t think it was a good idea.
I knew how to get to the warehouse in St. Ouen, but I did not know how to drive a Citroën. I knew how to drive a car with a stick shift but I did not how to work a shift sticking out of the Citroën’s dashboard. I puttered along for about 10 minutes when someone from the office passed me in another car, waived me to stop and took over.
I was soon assigned to compiling production reports on brake parts, which I could not mess up. I was good at math.
One of the best videos Fox has produced for the 2026 World Cup is studio analyst Thierry Henry‘s story of growing up in les banlieues of Paris, outside the Périphérique, the highway that encircles the French capital.
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