SOCCER:FRENCH FOOTBALL was thrown into a new crisis yesterday after a claim that officials tried to limit the number of black and Arab players coming through the youth system to make the national team more white.

The French Football Federation initiated an internal inquiry after the influential website Mediapart reported senior federation officials had secretly discussed introducing ethnicity quotas at youth level.

The alleged plan involved limiting non-white players as young as 12 or 13 from entering the selection process for training academies.

“For the top brass in French football, the issue is settled: there are too many blacks, too many Arabs and not enough white players in French football,” the website claimed.

Citing sources within the federation, the report said a number of training centre directors were notified of the quotas in recent weeks and alleged that national officials believe some of France’s biggest clubs already use similar selection methods on an informal basis.

At a meeting in January, according to Mediapart, a senior official at the federation suggested a cap of 30 per cent on non-white players but warned that “this must not be said”.

The report also alleged national team manager Laurent Blanc told a separate meeting he was “favourable” to a change in selection criteria.

Amid stunned reactions from government ministers and former players, the federation firmly denied the existence of a quota policy.

At a special press conference, Blanc insisted he had no knowledge of any such plan and that the only discrimination he knew of related to physical attributes such as size.

“To me, all of this is totally false. It’s a lie. There is no plan based on criteria of colour or nationality, to my knowledge, and I don’t imagine that someone in the technical management area could have such an intention,” he said.

Fernand Duchaussoy, the federation president, said he was “taken aback” by the allegations and pledged that they would be vigorously investigated.

Blanc has previously complained that young players with dual nationality can benefit from a three-year stint in a French elite training centre and then declare for their country of origin, but his spokesman said he was “outraged” by the claims.

The ethnic composition of the national team is an acutely sensitive topic in France. Blanc was a member of the celebrated “black, blanc, beur” (black, white, north African) team that won the World Cup in 1998 with national heroes such as Zinedine Zidane and Lilian Thuram. The far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen complained there were too many black players in the squad while a leading Socialist regional head, the late Georges Freche, was expelled from his party in 2007 for making the same observation.

But the 1998 team was seen by many to symbolise the promise of a new era of social rapprochement between France and its minorities.

When France was humiliated by its team’s performance at last year’s World Cup in South Africa – when the players went on strike and failed to progress beyond the first round – a subtext to the backlash against them was that non-white players had led the mutiny.

According to Mediapart, events in South Africa “swayed” some officials towards the quota idea.

Speaking after the allegations emerged, World Cup hero Thuram, who is outspoken on racism and once accused France President Nicolas Sarkozy of judging people along race lines, said: “Initially I thought this was a joke. I’m so stunned I don’t know what to say.”

He added if the reports were true, the scandal would run and run. Sports minister Chantal Jouanno ordered the federation to investigate the claims and said she would liaise closely with senior football officials as the inquiry progressed.

Henri Guaino, Sarkozy’s special adviser, said he was “viscerally opposed to any form of quota”, adding: “Setting quotas would be the end of the republic.”

Counting people by race or ethnic origin – even for census purposes or for statistics research – is banned in France, a state which, in theory, is blind to race or religion. The notion of quotas is fundamentally anti-republican.