This might be my favorite World Cup story so far … because it’s so ridiculous.

France’s national soccer team is on strike.

This strikes me as tres French. And 21st century Euro. A sort of instinctive opposition to authority, a willingness to take collective action against The Man even when it actually hurts the collective.

It is about France sending home loose cannon Nicolas Anelka (think “Milton Bradley off his meds”) after he showered his coach with particularly salty obscenities in the locker room a few days back — and without even having the decency to say “pardon my French.”

What happens now?

Certainly, France fans (and they must have a few left) hope it is a one-day work-stoppage.

If you didn’t follow the link, the team got to the practice ground, the players piled off the bus … then they got back on and pulled the blinds and handed over a message to the team’s media director condemning the French Football Federation for being so harsh with Anelka.

Backtrack for a moment. We will stipulate that France is coached by an idiot. Raymond Domenech should have been fired two years ago, or even six months ago after France qualified by the narrowest of margins, advancing thanks to an illegal goal vs. Ireland.

But the French have become loath to fire people. In real life, it is nearly impossible. The companies pay social costs so heavy, they often carry around dead weight for years and just go broke rather than get rid of bad apples and incompetents.

This attitude may have worked to the advantage of Domenech, even though he works at the pleasure of the FFF (or displeasure of the FFF, as it were). “Can we fire him? Maybe not. Better just leave him alone.”

France had been a mess for at least a year. Well, since going out of the 2008 European championship in the group stage, actually. But Domenech kept his job.

Move forward to this World Cup. France opened with a scoreless match against Uruguay, which is a solid South American side … but not to be confused with Brazil.

France followed up that monument to limp by getting kicked around by Mexico, 2-0, in Game 2.

It was at halftime of the match that the merde hit the fan, and Anelka went all Tommy Lasorda (“What did I think of Kingman’s performance???”) on Domenech, with the French equivalent of F-bombs being showered on the hapless coach — who is beginning to look more and more like Peter Sellers as Clouseau). It seems Domenech was taking Anelka out of the game.

Still, the French seemed inclined to cover up the whole episode, for fear it would damage the team’s reputation (as if it had any dignity left to forfeit) … but somebody in the room who heard the tirade leaked it to the media, and L’Equipe, the  French sports newspaper, reported it.

The FFF was shocked, shocked that such language was directed at the coach and on Saturday announced that Anelka was being shipped home for refusing to apologize.

Today, the “people” responded. The people in this case being the highly paid soccer professionals  who could not abide this insult. Apparently, no workers committee had been convened. In fact, it might have been against French law to send Anelka home.

French players also seem exercised by the concept that “someone tattled” … darkly hinting that someone who “meant harm” to the team told the media. (Again, as if much more harm could be done to the nation’s football reputation.) The players want an investigation into who leaked and the traitre punished — perhaps by having to watch video of France football from the past year in an endless loop.

Anyway, it is curious that the crime here was not the Anelka blue-streak directed at his coach … but the fact that anyone found out about it. OK.

I liked this bit of it: The team’s director, Jean-Louis Valentin, quit on the spot as the players went AWOL, stopping only to tell reporters, “It’s a scandal for the French, for the young people here. It’s a scandal for the federation and the French team. They don’t want to train. It’s unacceptable.”

(Insert your own Gallic harrumphing here.)

He continued: “As for me, it’s over. I’m leaving the federation. I’m sickened and disgusted.”

Perhaps one positive from this is how it shows the French players have some emotional/intellectual connection, still, to the public. France is a country where aggrieved workers with high-difficulty jobs — like, say, driving a largely automated Metro train — take to the streets when anyone threatens their right to retire at age 41 with 90 percent of their income guaranteed for life, and every saint’s day off in the meantime. And if they feel like it, they will take a day off for a manifestation that cripples Paris transit and makes tourists wonder why they came. Yes, very French.

Perhaps the players can find the inspiration to return to “work” on Monday, ahead of their Tuesday match with South Africa. France could still reach the second round — if les bleus can defeat South Africa, which gave up on its team after Uruguay shredded it 3-0 last Wednesday. But now … South Africa could win just by taking the field.

Of course, as Woody Allen famously remarked, “80 percent of life is just showing up” … and the French couldn’t manage even 1 percent of that on Sunday.