Piers Edwards at the BBC:
Worth reading to the end.When France won the 1998 World Cup, the success wasn't discussed solely in footballing terms, as many will recall. Instead, countless voices - whether in the media or outside - commended a multicultural team for having helped to harmonise a nation sometimes torn by racial differences.
The Times, for example, credited the success with having "consolidated a new national identity" amongst the French.
But 12 years later, this celebration of France's multicultural ways was apparently no longer so welcome - as investigative website Mediapart discovered.
The claims that the French Football Federation's leading coaches proposed in November 2010 to secretly limit the intake of black and north African players to 30% at certain regional youth training centres, including the renowned Clairefontaine facility, were swiftly dismissed when they first emerged.
How could it be true when Zinedine Zidane (with Algerian heritage), Marcel Desailly (Ghanaian) and Patrick Vieira (Senegalese) - not to mention Lilian Thuram (Guadeloupe) and Christian Karembeu (New Caledonia) among others - were so central to Les Bleus' World Cup triumph?
But with a transcript of the conversation having appeared, and the head of the FFF's National Technical Board (DTN) admitting the words were true, a massive scandal and two separate investigations have begun in France - with the question of institutionalised racism at its core.
So what exactly changed in the intervening years?
The Fifa rules, very simply.
So can Bale play for England now? Please!