The horizon of Ligue 2 should clear up on June 12 with an expected decision concerning the chaotic Bordeaux-Rodez, whose interruption after a violent act prevents the final classification from being ratified and, therefore, the climbs and descents. The Disciplinary Committee, meeting urgently on Monday, placed the file under investigation “in view of the seriousness of the facts”, said the Professional Football League (LFP). “Pending the decision, the result of the match is not counted in the classification,” she said in a statement.
The suspense will therefore stretch for another week, at least, or even more depending on the various appeals that the clubs concerned could carry out. The meeting played Friday between Bordeaux and Rodez during the final day of Ligue 2 was interrupted definitively in the first period after the aggression, by a supporter of the Girondins, of an RAF player who had just opened the scoring.
Case law
This match was decisive both for Bordeaux, engaged in a distance sprint with Metz for accession to Ligue 1, and for Rodez, in the fight with Annecy to avoid relegation. At 1-0 in favor of the visitors, Bordeaux missed the rise in the elite while Rodez escaped the descent in National. Several options are possible: a match to be replayed and/or a point penalty for Bordeaux, for example. “The decision will be made at the end of the session on Monday June 12, 2023, at 1 p.m., during which the instructor will submit his report,” said the League. “Awaiting the decision, the result of the match is not counted in the classification”.
The Girondins de Bordeaux reacted to the decision by regretting that the commission did not “replay the match quickly”, a solution which “would have made it possible to meet the sporting constraints of the calendar”, according to the club in a press release. For Bordeaux, the case law does not encourage optimism since the latest incidents involving supporters and players have caused heavy sanctions for the host clubs.
Nice and Lyon already sanctioned
For example, Nice received two penalty points (and one suspended) after misbehavior when hosting OM in August 2021. Lyon lost one point after a bottle throw on Marseille’s Dimitri Payet in November of the same year. These matches, both definitively stopped, have certainly been replayed. But the deal is more complex this time as the season is supposed to be over. For its part, Bordeaux has postponed the holidays of its players for a week with a view to a possible match to be replayed.
The interruption of the match on Friday, at 1-0 in favor of Rodez, had several consequences: the promotion to Ligue 1 of Metz, second, to the detriment of Bordeaux, third, and the relegation of Annecy, seventeenth, doubled by Rodez, sixteenth.
Pass of arms
Bordeaux intends to “assert all (its) rights, as well as its rights on appeal”, declared President Gérard Lopez on Friday. The members of the disciplinary committee, around the president Sébastien Deneux, heard Lopez for about half an hour, Monday at midday. The Bordeaux leader did not wish to speak when he left. Friday’s incidents gave rise to a fairly fierce pass of arms, Sunday by interposed press releases, between Rodez and Annecy, its direct competitor for maintenance.
If “no violence on a pitch should therefore take place”, on the other hand “taking advantage of external events to profit from them such as the maintenance of your club, by betraying football, is also contrary to sporting ethics”, launched Sebastien Faraglia, president of Annecy. The leader protested against the hypothesis of a match won on green carpet by Rodez Aveyron Football, “because it is the most elaborate form of cheating, which is very serious”. To suspect “openly and publicly” the club is “a disgrace”, replied the RAF. “These remarks are inadmissible, we cannot say in the same spirit that the violence is unacceptable and prosecute the victim of these same acts of violence.”