Monday 23 August 2021
“Fiasco”, “limitless stupidity”
Who is to blame for the outbreak of violence in Nice?
In France’s Ligue 1, the spectators are back as well as in the other top football leagues in Europe. But bad pictures emerge in Nice, after a storm by the supporters, the game is canceled. Now it’s about the consequences – and the pointing of blame.
A “fiasco evening”, “boundless stupidity”, “a shame” – the French press found harsh words for what happened on Sunday evening at the Ligue 1 Mediterranean derby between OGC Nice and Olympique Marseille: bottles thrown, dozens of football fans, rushing onto the field, scrambling with players and stewards, interrupting the game and finally abandoning the game. Meanwhile, Nice’s public prosecutor is investigating the incidents, as the French news agency AFP reported. According to the broadcaster BFMTV, three minors were provisionally arrested on Sunday evening, but are again at large.
France’s Minister of Sports, Roxana Maracineanu, told Franceinfo: “A red line has been crossed.” The French football league has announced that it will summon the clubs to the disciplinary committee after the “serious incidents”. What happened? Nice welcomes Marseille on Sunday evening; It is the second time after long months of corona-related abstinence that the Nice fans are allowed to return to their stadium. But the game is quickly overshadowed by unfair actions: supporters of OGC Nice throw objects onto the field again and again.
About a quarter of an hour before the final whistle, when the score was 1-0 for Nice, Marseille playmaker Dimitri Payet was hit in the back by a plastic bottle in front of a corner and went down. Shortly afterwards, furious, he threw several plastic bottles back in the direction of the fan stand, while other teammates rushed to his side. The dam breaks: Dozens of Nice supporters storm the field, there is scuffle between fans and players of both clubs. The players eventually leave the field.
“Security was not guaranteed”
When the game is supposed to continue after about an hour’s break, the Marseille players refuse to go back onto the pitch. “Who would have wanted to go back there? How can you not understand (the players)?” Writes the sports newspaper “L’Equipe”. Pictures published by the paper online show injuries to several players: defender Luan Peres and midfielder Mattéo Guendouzi – who was with Hertha BSC last season – have abrasions on their necks, and Payet, who was hit by the bottle, has scratches on his back.
“You don’t play football the way you go to war,” said Marseilles Mayor Benoît Payan to Franceinfo. “I’m going to call the sports minister today to tell her how I see things and to tell her that what happened is intolerable.” The incidents made football appear in a pathetic light. And the lack of security in the stadium in Nice was just as pathetic.
But blame comes from Nice in the other direction. “I think the thing that broke the barrel was the reaction of two players from Marseille: namely (…) throwing bottles in the direction of our fan stand,” said OGC President Jean-Pierre Rivère on Sunday evening a press conference after the game. The abandonment of the game was exaggerated. He himself obtained security guarantees from fans during the interruption. “I am convinced that it would have gone very well.”
The assessment of OM President Pablo Longoria is completely different: “The safety of our players was not guaranteed,” he said after the game was abandoned. The fact that the French league wanted to continue the game is unacceptable. The referee saw it just as much as he did. You have to make a precedent for French football from what happened.
.