The injury is surely too serious for Fabio Grosso, recently dismissed from his position as coach, to choose to watch the match between Olympique de Marseille (OM) and Olympique Lyonnais (OL), Wednesday December 6 (at 9 p.m. ).
Arriving to replace Laurent Blanc on the bench of the Rhone club in mid-September, his mission was cut short, failing to be able to reverse the catastrophic trend in OL’s results. From this two and a half month break, Fabio Grosso bears another scar, visible at his left eye, which reminds him of October 29.
On the way to the Stade-Vélodrome for the match against OM at the end of the 10e day of Ligue 1, the bus transporting the Lyon team and those of their supporters were the targets of stones from around a hundred individuals on the public highway.
That evening, Fabio Grosso and his deputy Raffaele Longo were shot in the face. The Italian coach suffered twelve stitches. This attack caused the postponement of the meeting, which will finally be held on Wednesday evening. Unlike the initial date, there will be no supporters in the visitors’ sector of the Stade-Vélodrome. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, on Tuesday banned the travel of Lyon fans.
Hatred on both sides
This decision confirms the position of the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, who had spoken out the day before in favor of the travel ban “when the match presents a risk”in reaction to the death of an FC Nantes supporter, stabbed on Saturday ahead of a match against Nice near the Beaujoire stadium.
Regarding OM-OL or OL-OM, the ban was already common in recent years, the authorities justifying their decisions by the history of incidents surrounding this meeting. For once, on October 29, the Bouches-du-Rhône police headquarters authorized the arrival of six hundred Lyon supporters in Marseille, under restricted and constrained conditions.
On this occasion, hatred was expressed on both sides. The throwing of stones and glass bottles at Lyon buses were not the only incidents leading to the opening of investigations by the Marseille prosecutor’s office. A procedure for provoking racial hatred and racial insults also targets the Nazi salutes and monkey cries addressed by certain individuals to Marseille supporters from the Lyon supporters’ stand.
Six months earlier, during the previous match in the OL stadium, fights had broken out between local and Marseille supporters scattered in the stands. On videos published on social networkswe could see a black man being beaten in the stadium square and heard among the crowd: “You don’t belong, you dirty nigger. »
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