In October 2016, a few months after leaving the presidency of the Professional Football League (LFP) after 14 years in office, Frédéric Thiriez (68) was shooting red balls at Noël Le Graët (79).
“Everyone knows he soaped my board,” said the starter to explain his start.
He assured, however, that he felt capable of spending a weekend in Guingamp at… Le Graët.
To our knowledge, Thiriez never received the famous invitation and this moment of sharing between “good friends” could not be done.
This is hardly surprising, because everything opposes the two main candidates for the election for the presidency of the French Football Federation (FFF), which will take place this Saturday morning.
The campaign for this election revived tensions between the two strong men of French football between 2011 and 2016. The former boss of the LFP has never ceased to criticize the action of the President of the Federation towards the amateur world, as much as he castigated his untimely speeches.
This is the game when it comes, for the challenger, to unravel the balance sheet of the outgoing.
Strangers to each other
But the tensions between these two political animals are older.
“During the whole time they were together, one in the Federation and the other in the League, they looked at each other, sniffed at each other like two opponents waiting for the reaction of the other.
There was a constant mistrust, even if at times perhaps flushed a little a little admiration, says a collaborator.
But the bottom line is that they are strangers to each other.
Thiriez is the lawyer at the Council of State, he did the ENA and he was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Le Graët is the Breton, son of a Communist, who set up his business with the sweat of his brow.
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“Noël Le Graët is a man of few words,” rebounds Denis Trossat, treasurer of the FFF between 2011 and 2016. He taught me something, it is silence.
In a meeting, he observes, listens, with him we talk in small touches, and then he throws an arrow, an observation.
And, opposite, you have Thiriez with his highly developed verve, which turns out to be a good client for the media.
They are two personalities with completely different styles of expression.
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Two men who also espouse divergent political routes.
Le Graët, PS mayor of Guingamp from 1995 to 2008, has remained faithful to his socialist friendships and continues to cultivate his relations with Jean-Yves Le Drian and François Hollande.
Thiriez, former member of Gaston-Defferre's cabinet, Socialist Minister of the Interior from 1981 to 1984, has evolved in his political career.
The former PS activist, married to Marie-Claire Carrère-Gée, a Paris advisor close to Rachida Dati, among other things approached Jean-Louis Borloo, the former center-right minister.
Passion versus mission
Thiriez, Le Graët: two managers, two software programs, but also two radically opposed relations to football.
During this campaign, Noël Le Graët never responded directly to the criticisms or to the proposals of Frédéric Thiriez.
A clearly established strategy, aimed at not giving the surface to his opponent, and a way of pointing out the lack of credibility of the enarch when he talks about the amateur world.
A conviction deeply rooted in the president of the FFF, who declared in December 2015, when Karim Benzema was sidelined: “I said that I liked hanging out with people who knew something about the ball.
Who among you has discussed football with Thiriez lately?
I note that 100% of journalists claim that Thiriez does not know much about football.
Scathing.
“At Le Graët, football is a passion when, for Thiriez, it is a mission, develops this observer of the arcana of football.
In this election, Le Graët brings an illegitimate trial to his opponent, when the other puts him on an image trial.
Clearly, the words of the President of the Federation on racism or sexism would harm French football.
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2015, the point of no return
This type of passing of arms - and the latent animosity that underlies it - is hardly new.
The two leaders often clashed during their respective terms.
Sometimes with speckled foils, sometimes with small murderous phrases, as during the crisis of 2015 on the number of climbs and descents between L1 and L2.
At the time, through the voice of their leaders, the League and the Federation had scrambled about this reform before the Council of State ruled in favor of the FFF and maintained the principle of 3 climbs and 3 descents between the two divisions.
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"Le Graët found it unacceptable for Thiriez to stage himself and lead the two institutions to the legal field while challenging the organization of French football," said a relative.
For Denis Trossat, who opposed the Breton in 2016 on Jacques Rousselot's list: “Le Graët is a competitor.
He doesn't like to lose, and above all he has memory.
Thiriez knows this better than anyone.
