08/23/2021 18:59
Clarín.com
sports
Updated 08/23/2021 6:59 PM
The ultras, those French fans who accompany their team everywhere, with flags, coordinated songs, scarves and unconditional encouragement, returned to the front page, after the serious incidents between OGC Nice and Olympique de Marseille on Sunday night.
He is the lesser-known face of Ligue 1, the competition that has just won the most precious figure in world football thanks to the arrival of Lionel Messi at Paris-Saint Germain.
The violence and overflow at the Allianz Riviera stadium in Nice forced a judicial investigation, with mutual accusations from the mayors of both cities and a public opinion condemnation of the coaches, players and fans led by the Minister of Sports, Roxana Maracineanu. He warned that
"a red line has been exceeded"
for which there will have to be sanctions.
Ligue 1 summoned both clubs to the meeting of the Disciplinary Commission for Wednesday, August 25.
There the "serious incidents" that have occurred will be studied.
"The LFP firmly condemns the violence that occurred during the match between Nice and Olympique de Marseille," the League reported.
At the same time, the French Public Prosecutor's Office ordered an investigation into the invasion.
The fans involved risk a prison sentence of up to three years and a fine of 45,000 euros.
This Sunday, Sampaoli jumped overflowing when the fans invaded the playing field.
(Photo by Valery HACHE / AFP)
"What a shame!". It is the most listened phrase to synthesize what happened in that party interrupted by barbarism. It was stopped at 29 minutes of the second half and the game did not resume again, since
the Marseille team, with Jorge Sampaoli as DT and Leonardo Balerdi as player, decided not to return to the field
. The scandal was unleashed after midfielder Dimitri Payet, after receiving several bottles of water, decided to respond and throw one of those plastic containers against the ultras' rostrum.
An unconscious tide of a hundred fans invaded the stadium and became a ring
with the visiting team players as easy targets.
It was ten minutes of violence. One of the fans left the stadium on a stretcher
.
The security services were overwhelmed.
“This beats football.
It is a public order problem.
The idea is that everyone can go home safely, ”said OGC Nice president Jean Pierre Rivére.
There, the Argentine goalkeeper Walter Benítez, formerly Quilmes, plays at the club in the south of France.
The Olympique de Marseille and NIza players in the middle of Sunday's brawl.
Photo: AFP
A sad night.
No one will be able to forget this general chaos.
A sad night, with assaulted players and incidents at the Allianz Riviera.
Payet was assaulted and fed up.
He threw the bottle at the ultras.
The Spaniard Álvaro González, who is being targeted in Nice for provoking the rostrum, was next to him.
Everyone was trying to calm Payet when the playing field was invaded by the ultras.
Everything overflowed.
OM security arrived on the field to help those inside the stadium.
It was a pandemonium.
The ultras that entered the playing field were surrounded so that they would not attack the Marseillais again.
In the midst of that confusion, Sampaoli left the bench and stormed onto the pitch with his arms fully tattooed.
Players from both teams returned to the locker room.
The situation calmed down and the fans returned to the stands.
The referee, Benoit Bastien, invited to play again.
Sampaoli, who had lost control and had to be contained by his own leaders.
He shouted in Spanish with his assistants:
“You have to make a decision.
We don't play ”
.
#Unfortunate |
at # Ligue1UberEats Ultras at #Nice they launch a bottle at #DimitriPayet.
The #OlympiqueMarseille player returns it to the Tribune and dozens of fans jump onto the pitch to attack the visiting team's footballers.
pic.twitter.com/pJ31S6wXsh
- Ramón Valencia 🎮 🇲🇽 ✪ Road to # Qatar2022 (@ ramonovic09) August 23, 2021
Rivére, president of the OGC Nice, set out to meet the ultras and their representatives.
He sought to calm them.
He wanted to know what had happened and to make sure that the match would continue.
Something that did not happen.
He returned to the locker room to count the victims: three bruised OM players.
A video circulating on the networks shows Jorge Desio, Sampaoli's assistant, punishing a fan on the playing field.
The Marseille club refused to return to the field of play
.
A Nice leader insisted that they return, arguing that "it is a public order problem" and that the party should be restarted.
Long wait.
The OM said that security was not assured.
Sampaoli was seen leaving with his assistants, her bag over her shoulder.
The party will go down in history for showing the world the violence of the ultras in France
.
Pablo Longoria, president of Marseille, was final: “We decided not to continue the match for the safety of our players.
This should serve as a precedent ”.
French Ultras
The day after the Allianz Riviera invasion and the bewildering brawl that followed, it was not easy to determine who was responsible for this humiliating scandal for the sport.
The players cling to a fan who jumped onto the pitch Photo: AFP
Unlike British or German
hooligans, French ultras have their origins in Italy
, on the other side of the Alps.
But his ideals represent a culture of a movement that opposes the commercialization of sports and football in particular.
They all proclaim themselves the originals -the Brazilian twisted, the Argentine bars-, but
the inspirers of the French ultras are the Italians, who began to form in 1951, in post-war times
, and were super violent.
The ultras of Lazio, the club of Rome, had a predominance of fascist slogans and spread to the rest of Europe.
Their difference from British hooligans is that matches generally do not end with episodes of violence.
The aim of the French ultras is to wear the club's colors, travel together, reach the stadiums en masse and unfurl the flags.
That allows the police to keep an eye on your movements.
Clarín collected the testimony of Williams Nuytens, a sociologist at the University of Artois (Pas-de-Calais) and a specialist in violence in soccer stadiums, who worked for several years in the National Anti-Vandalism Division (DNLH) to explain this phenomenon with the one that Lionel Messi will run into.
“The disputes between the Nice and Marseille ultras are well documented.
Nice ultras are not just any
.
As a reminder, being an ultra means supporting beyond.
And they have a very strong Latino history and culture.
We are in something that is similar to what is happening in Rome, Milan or Turin.
They are used to expressing their discontent, to dissolve, to reconstitute, to change their name ...
There is a true culture of collective protest and violence,
”he began.
The Allianz Riviera stadium in Nice was overwhelmed by the invasion of the pitch.
It could have ended in tragedy Photo: AFP
And he continued: “We have witnessed the spectacle of a failed security apparatus, more private than public. The national anti-vandalism division, the Nice club, the other clubs and the League knew the context. There are categories of risky matches and this was one of the riskiest. Together with some researchers, we have helped to establish a hierarchy, which allows the construction of a suitable security apparatus. Except here, we let the course of events take a bellicose bottom ”.
“
I read and heard this Monday that it is possible that Olympique de Marseille will lose the game because they did not want to restart it
.
What does that mean?
We start again with the same shit, that
when we let the match between Juventus and Liverpool take place in Heysel
(in the final of the European Cup that was played in Brussels on May 29, 1985)
there were 39 deaths
.
What is the problem?
Don't we have the memory of the events? ”He recommended.
🗓️ Today marks the 35th anniversary of the Heysel tragedy, which occurred in 1985, in #Brussels, during the #European Cup final between #Liverpool and #Juventus, when an avalanche caused by the hooligans caused the death of 39 fans and more than 600 injured.
pic.twitter.com/llSApqQop6
- Football and Politics (@FutboliPolitica) May 29, 2020
“We saw it again during the European Championship with the Wembley incidents.
Vandalism has not disappeared, it has simply moved in space, as we have known it for a long time.
There are groups of hooligans that still exist and have reunited.
After Sunday night in Nice, there could have been another logic.
Some attackers may have wanted to advance their group with this type of weapon facts to identify.
We know this rationality, it is sad.
It is possible that other supporters were just drunk or under the influence of psychotropic drugs, "explained the sociologist.
Against commercial football
The French ultras reject a model of commercialization of the sport.
Soccer clubs in the hands of billionaire businessmen have been transformed into consumer products: television audiovisual rights, championships without taking into account the availability of fans, matches organized by sponsors, new stadiums turned into temples of consumption with boutiques, hotels, restaurants ... Professional football became a commercial sport.
An extremely profitable economic activity.
They want a peaceful, consumerist, calm, docile and familiar audience.
The ultras claim to be the soul of popular football.
They claim the sustained support, the songs, the shirts, the colors.
All of this differentiates them from business football.
In France, the ultras are generally not violent, but a popular public, from the suburbs, associated, with authorization from the prefecture and willing to enjoy football.
They are mostly Arab and black.
Fraternity, honor, local identity are its most important values.
The sociologist
Nicolás Hourcade
considers that the “ultras believe that they make up a movement, with the same world, practices, rules, networks.
Their social structure is similar to that of Italy: they are mostly young, between 15 and 26 years old, white, students, high school students, unemployed with a precarious status, immigrant and suburban with a first job ”.
The second family
The ultras in France have a hierarchical operation.
They arrive on the field for the first time when they are 13 years old, accompanied by a relative.
When they grow up, they choose to go to those tribunes of the ultras to share the game.
The ultra group is a well-organized group that requires time: it is like a second family, with status according to the degree of commitment, sex, place of residence, personal qualities and world perspectives.
For the most part, the ultras don't want to have anything to do with the girls.
"Girls have nothing to do in an ultra group," they say.
Manhood, physical strength and courage are his flags.
The social world surpasses the soccer field and continues in the center of the city, in a station, on the internet, on the road.
Opposed to Fair Play?
Messi, before the PSG fans.Photo: EFE
As soccer becomes commercialized, the ultras are seen as fans who cause riots, as opposed to fair play and partying.
They are less and less welcome.
Especially when they oppose the renovation of the stadiums.
They believe they want to make the stands that house them disappear while complaining about the violent behavior of the police.
Most ultras consider themselves apolitical.
Although certain groups lean on the right or the left.
In the Arab Spring, the ultras mobilized to defend the protesters from the forces of order.
The ultras at Paris Saint-Germain are different.
They swirl in the Auteuil grandstand, in a tradition that began in the 1982 French Cup. Divided into six groups, they are the ones that will accompany Messi in his season in France.
Their difference?
They are warm with opponents.
Their only rivalries are Olympique de Marseille, in a battle between the capital and the province, and Juventus.
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