Violence slows French football

The general director of the French League, Arnaud Rouger, decided to suspend the match that Olympique de Marseille and Rennes were to play, scheduled for 9:00 p.m. this Saturday, after some 200 fans attacked the Marseille team's training center and attacked some players, including the Spanish Álvaro González Soberón.

"For the first time in the history of our professional football we have had to consider suspending a match due to acts of violence in a training center," Rouger said in

L'Equipe

.

“This is dramatic.

The safety of the training fields is not the responsibility of the League, but we have paid the consequences ”.

If Covid-19 threatens to cripple the football industry for years, France is the epicenter of the disaster.

The economic and sports crisis that the French league is going through after the declaration of the pandemic and the disappointments derived from the commercialization of television rights to Mediapro have hit Marseille with special force.

The only French club to have a European Cup has the most bellicose fans.

Once a commercial advantage, football fanaticism now disgusts the leaders.

The most emphatic is Jacques-Henri Eyraud, who in a conference held last summer came to propose that goals scored from 30 meters were worth two points.

Born in Paris in 1968, with a degree in Political Science and an MBA from Harvard, he began his career at Eurodisney before establishing himself as an exemplary technocrat.

There is no archetype in more palpable contradiction with the passionate fans of the most bustling Mediterranean port in France.

The followers have been facing Eyraud for months, who is increasingly defiant.

In his last speech, he proclaimed that the club had plenty of fans.

🚨 ULTRAS DEL MARSEILLE ATTACK AND STOLE ÁLVARO GONZÁLEZ

👉🏻The Ultras tried to enter the club's training demanding the departure of the OM leaders

➡️ The Spanish tried to stop them and there

THEY

HAVE

BEEN HIM 🎙️ Informa @josedpalacio pic.twitter.com/ZamTxSH25y

- Sports Carousel (@carrusel) January 30, 2021

This Saturday afternoon a horde of ultras armed with dozens of flares stormed the La Commanderie training center.

They shouted in chorus: "Eyraud resign!".

They destroyed furniture and started a fire in a setting that soon evoked that of a battle.

Some of the team's players were attacked before the police detained more than 20 people.

The SER chain reported that the Spaniard Álvaro González was attacked and robbed when he tried to calm the spirits of the invaders.

Álvaro has been one of the voices that have been heard the most in the crisis.

After the defeat against bottom bottom Nimes two weeks ago, the Cantabrian declared that the team had played "like shit."

Eyraud regretted the events: “There are three hundred club employees in a state of shock because what we have seen is very scary.

No one expected this wild horde.

I think we avoid the worst.

There could be a drama.

Those who have demonstrated at La Commanderie are not true fans;

they are destroyers, they are criminals, people who do not represent anything ”.

Captain Steve Mandanda joined their president: “I have played for OM for 13 years and I know everything about this club.

I know the love and frustration that results can bring.

But today's events are unacceptable.

A sports crisis can never justify this display of violence ”.

"Year zero"

Olympique is seventh in the league standings, 13 points behind the Champions League spots held by PSG and Lyon.

His time in the Champions League, where he coincided in Group C with Manchester City, Porto and Olympiacos, ended in last place in the table with one victory and five defeats.

The speeches of the president, who likes to get into the locker room to throw philippics at his players, have not served as stimulating.

The team suffers a spiral of deterioration in its game that has led the coach, the Portuguese André Vilas-Boas, to declare this Friday that he does not think he will renew his contract, which expires in June, after two months of constant conflicts and discussions. inflamed with the footballers and with Eyraud.

"Next year," said the coach;

“It will be year zero.

There will be a total cleaning ”.

The fan demonstrations against Eyraud and the players have been going on since November.

The banners proliferate in the city and on its access roads.

"Eyraud, go back to the capital," says the gentlest.

"

Vous êtes dégueulasses

", put another.

"You gross us out."

The coordinated fan actions began on November 28, when a mob of supporters blocked the team bus as it left La Commanderie on its way to the stadium to face Nantes.

Insults rained down on players like Payet, who got out of the vehicle to explain to the agitators.

According to

L'Equipe

, last Tuesday the most radical groups, including the Fanatics and the Vieille Garde, resolved to demonstrate this Saturday, again, before La Commanderie.

Since then isolated incidents have multiplied.

This Friday, a man armed with a

goat's foot

type of steel lever

got out of his car in front of the sports complex and threatened the guards.

It was the prologue to the fire.

The suspension of a match due to ultra violence reveals an untenable situation that affects all of French football.