The Irish team may not be there but that doesn’t mean a major event like a World Cup is going to pass by without some sort of Irish representation among the masses.
An unknown Irish supporter in Qatar made sure to place himself front and centre of a French television vox-pop and in doing so has gone viral over the past 24 hours, The Sun reports.
Egged on by a friend in an Offaly GAA jersey, he interrupts a French fan being interviewed to chime in with a suddenly iconic phrase of: “Je suis une baguette”.
The comment translates as “I’m a baguette”.
Wise words. No matter what language they’re spoken in.
It was not what French viewers expected to see as fans exited the stadium following France’s second group stage match against Denmark.
The light-hearted moment was taken in stride by the French guy after an understandable moment where he looked a bit perplexed.
And Irish viewers online certainly enjoyed it. One clip of the hilarious moment has 4.5 million views.
The hashtag “baguette” was briefly trending in the UK.
The clip was given more fuel when English legend Gary Lineker retweeted the video.
French President Emmanuel Macron also liked the tweet.
The viral fan has since been identified as Eddie O’Keefe, who has spoken about his new celebrity with an Irish radio station.
“I don’t know where it came from. “Je suis une baguette” came out of my mouth and I just ran off,” he told Cork’s 96Fm radio station, the Irish Independent reported.
“We’re always up for mischief, Irish people, like. Always just up for the craic, up for mischief and sure, we were just laughing away. We had a few drinks in us as well.”
Meanwhile someone else joked it was the best upset by a smaller nation yet in a competition that’s so far been full of them.
There were also a few punchlines about it being an early act of mind games ahead of Ireland welcoming Les Bleus to The Aviva for a Euros qualifier in March.
Of course since we are now over a week into the tournament, this is far from the first instance of Irish “involvement” being noticed.
