Football leagues were a fine thing.
They let the people of the Rhineland pour their excess energy into cheering for the teams they supported, venting the hostility in their hearts by cursing rival teams and fighting their fans.
And those who secretly stirred up anti-French sentiment found it increasingly difficult to find an audience—people had already let it all out at the stadium, then went home and collapsed into bed. Who still had the energy to listen to your criticism of France?
At the same time, the league could provide jobs and show children from poor families another path to making something of themselves.
Well, although the Rhineland's teams currently had only a little over a hundred players in total, they had created a great many jobs in medicine, brewing, training, football production, stadium construction, and other fields, covering nearly a thousand people.
However, the players' incomes were still relatively low, roughly equivalent to the salaries of ordinary Civil Servants, with only a small bonus for winning matches. Yet even that level of pay held enormous appeal for ordinary people.
Because most players were part-time and had regular jobs of their own, they only needed to train one and a half days a week. That was tantamount to having two incomes. And winning the championship came with a massive bonus of 3,000 Francs, averaging more than 150 Francs per person! Even the runners-up received 1,000 Francs. Under the government's vigorous promotion and the constant gimmicks churned out by its "star-making campaign," football had become popular throughout the Rhineland in just a few months.
Football had begun earlier in other parts of France, so the league generated even greater enthusiasm there. There was even a semi-professional team—the Versailles Palace Sword Team. Its players were all nobles who had left their regular