Forget Euro 2004. The real spectator sport in Europe this summer is the bare-knuckle fight for the leadership of France's governing party.
The ambitious Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is seeking to wrest control of the UMP party from supporters of President Jacques Chirac as part of his plan to run for the presidency in 2007.
But Chirac, who has yet to announce whether he will stand again in three years' time, is waging an increasingly bitter effort behind-the-scenes to deprive his one-time protege of a party-machine that was key to his own presidential victories.
At a private meeting in the Elysee Palace on Tuesday, Chirac told Sarkozy he could enter November's contest for the UMP presidency - but warned the finance minister he would forfeit his influential cabinet post if he won.
The top UMP job is seen as a stepping stone to the French presidency. But Sarkozy became the country's most popular politician because of his success as Interior Minister and continued high-profile as Finance Minister - giving him an incentive to combine his cabinet role with the party job.
The UMP leadership crisis was triggered in January when Chirac loyalist Alain Juppe was convicted in a party funding scandal. He stands down in mid-July and the Elysee Palace has been scrambling to find a heavyweight alternative to Sarkozy.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has emerged as Chirac's candidate, a safe if uninspiring choice given the right's humiliation in this year's regional and European elections.
"The Sarkozy-Raffarin brawl", Le Parisien newspaper headlined an article on the start of a two-day, closed-door meeting of the UMP's national council at which Raffarin stated his case for the job.
"There can only be one hierarchy in the government...No government can exist with two authorities - the party and the executive," he said.
Only 700 of its 2,000 members turned up, said Sunday's Le Parisien, at a meeting variously described by participants as "surrealist", "pathetic" and "depressing".
Sarkozy has so far declined to respond publicly to Chirac, leaving his supporters to wonder aloud how the public would react if the government's best performer were sacked on becoming leader of the biggest party in parliament.
Chirac's demand is not written into the party's rules, and he himself has held more than one role at the same time. Chirac was prime minister, mayor of Paris and party chief all at once, and Juppe was prime minister while running the UMP's predecessor, the RPR.
"Either there's one rule for everyone, or there are no rules," a typically combative Sarkozy told UMP members on Sunday, flanked by Raffarin, Juppe and other pro-Chirac politicians in a show of unity that fooled no-one.
The game of bluff and counter-bluff could last until the November's leadership vote, though one minister hinted at a pre-emptive strike against Sarkozy.
Asked about Sarkozy's future within the government, Budget Minister Dominque Bussereau, a Raffarin loyalist, said "in all likelihood" there would be a cabinet reshuffle after elections to the Senate upper house of parliament on September 26.
"That's when these matters will be decided," he said.
Fortified by a 61 percent approval rating - double Raffarin's 32 percent - few expect Sarkozy to blink first.
Chirac's "Tout Sauf Sarkozy" (Anyne but Sarkozy) campaign has left perplexed many rank-and-file party members, who see Sarkozy as the only man with the charisma, drive, and vision to lead them to victory in 2007 against the resurgent Socialists.
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