On the days he is not refereeing, Francois Letexier sometimes shows up at a stranger’s door with paperwork that makes him unwelcome before he has said a word. This week he is the most talked-about referee at the World Cup, the man Egypt wants removed from the tournament, and the parallel between his two jobs has never been harder to ignore.
He is a huissier de justice, a bailiff, the person the French legal system sends to serve notices and enforce judgments nobody asked to receive. He specialises in rental disputes and illegal occupation: evictions, mostly, which does not make for easy company at the door. He found the job in law school and liked that it was hands-on. He did not expect it to become the best available description of his other career.
Asked what the two jobs share, he told the French outlet Brut simply: “Football generates some pretty crazy behaviours in terms of emotions, and in my work as a bailiff, often, when I am involved in collection actions, my presence is not always welcome. The situations also generate reactions to which I must adapt.”
He trains five or six times a week for the refereeing, on top of the case files. He has described the arrangement as two careers that complement each other, and there is a plainer reason he has kept it going: French referees aren’t professionals, and football, as he put it, is a fluctuating business. The bailiff work is the steadier income. It is also, he has said, a foothold in ordinary life outside a sport he calls extraordinary.