PARIS — Two countries at war – one of them with itself – had a date on a soccer field. It was a humid evening in the Bois de Boulogne and in the middle distance the Eiffel Tower was sparkling like a firework, celebrating the return, after a century of absence from the City of Light, of the great French invention, the Olympic Games.

Speaking strictly of sport, the group D match between the under-23 men’s sides of Mali and Israel carried little gravity. The Israeli playboys had lost six exhibition matches in a row. The Africans, who finished third at last year’s Africa Cup of Nations tournament, managed to beat a French fourth-division club in a tune-up last week.