Europe 1 with AFP 5:48 p.m., September 15, 2022

“A defamation complaint” has been filed by the French Football Federation (FFF) against the magazine “So Foot” “because of the seriously defamatory accusations contained in its edition of September 8, 2022”, writes the federation on Thursday.

Le Graët was invited to "a moment of exchange" on Friday with the Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra.

The French Football Federation (FFF) announced in a statement on Thursday that it had decided to file "a defamation complaint" against the magazine

So Foot

"because of the seriously defamatory accusations contained in its September 8, 2022 edition".

The FFF does not indicate against which specific elements contained in the

So Foot

investigation it has decided to file a complaint.

The monthly had notably published, on the basis of anonymous testimonies, three extracts from undated SMS which would have been recipients of current or past collaborators of the FFF and which would have been sent by the president of the FFF Noël Le Graët.

Women felt "sexually and morally harassed"

According to a source interviewed by

So Foot

, several women have thus resigned in recent years from the body because they felt "sexually harassed, but also morally" within the FFF.

Since the publication of this article, Noël Le Graët has been invited to "a moment of exchange" on Friday with the Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra.

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According to an internal source at the Federation, the decision to file a defamation complaint against So Foot was taken after a meeting of the executive committee of the FFF during which the subject was raised.

The management and personality of Le Graët singled out

The

So Foot

article more generally pinpoints the management but also the personality of the 80-year-old Breton leader, in office since 2011 and re-elected in 2021, and the conflicts around the divisive general manager Florence Hardouin.

Since the publication of this survey, the FFF, questioned by AFP, had remained completely silent.

In an interview with

the Team

on Tuesday, Noël Le Graët had however declared that he had "no intention of stopping at all".

“I have the clear, distinct and precise intention to go to the end of my mandate, until 2024”, he explained.