This Thursday, September 22, Basile Boli was received on the set of C à Vous. The opportunity for the former footballer to talk about his spiritual father, Bernard Tapie, and his first somewhat scathing encounter with him.
There was an unbreakable bond between Basile Boli and Bernard Tapie. However, between the former president of OM and the footballer who wore the colors for 4 years, everything did not start in joy and good humor. And for good reason, Bernard Tapie was not particularly tender with Basile Boli. In C à Vous this Thursday, the former football star spoke of his first tense meeting with the businessman, who died on October 3, 2021. It was in 1988, during an ordinary match between Auxerre and Marseille , that the paths of the two men crossed. During half-time, while Basile Boli had struggled rather well at the start of the match, Bernard Tapie comes to pay him a not really friendly little visit. “Watch out ! You play the bullshit but I’ll show you what we do to thugs like you!“, throws the president of OM to him. “It was a way to intimidate me“, recalls Basile Boli before adding: “He was the only president at the time who had the guts to go out on the field, talk to the players, and say what he had to say to them… That said, it didn’t impress me at all. everything !” On the contrary, Basile Boli had perceived this clash in a positive way, considering that it was a proof of interest on the part of Bernard Tapie. “If the president comes down from the stands and comes to find you, when there are 22 players on the pitch, something is going well!“And Basile Boli did not believe so well.
Basile Boli: the day he joined Bernard Tapie in Marseille
A few days later, Bernard Tapie gives him an appointment in his offices. An invitation that the footballer hesitates to decline, but finally accepts, before facing a second disappointment. “Marseille was not on my mind at all, but I make an appointment anyway. I go to his offices, rue de Friedland, and there, he makes me wait for an hour. After a while, I say to myself: ‘But he actually takes me for a fool!‘”, says Basile Boli in the columns of L’Equipe. The footballer finally ends up being received, without much courtesy. “I enter his office, he does not even close the door and says to me: ‘You’re not pretty to see play, you don’t have a good raise, you’re not armed for Marseille’‘OK, it starts well’, I think“, he remembers. But to his great surprise, Bernard Tapie then challenges him to join his club. “He explains to me that his players, in this case Jean-Pierre Papin, told him that to be European champions, you had to recruit Boli. And he adds: ‘If you have balls, if you have ambitions , you sign with OM!‘ That was the trigger.”
Basile Boli, at the bedside of Bernard Tapie three days before his death
Despite complicated beginnings, Basile Boli and Bernard Tapie ended up weaving a beautiful friendship, which lasted until the death of the businessman, in 2021. Three days before his disappearance, the footballer had him besides visited for “kiss her one last time“as he confided in the pages of La Provence. It was Stéphane Tapie, the son of the former deputy, who had warned Basile Boli, indicating that “it was time to say goodbye“The footballer then went to the bedside of his former president, staying a few moments by his side, in the company of Sophie Tapie.”He hugged me so tight“, says Basile Boli before adding: “My first reaction when I learned of his death was to think back to that last kiss I got. (…) It turned me upside down…”