Paris (AFP)
Gelson Martins will not play again this season: the Portuguese midfielder from Monaco was suspended six months Thursday by the disciplinary committee of the Professional Football League (LFP) for having jostled the referee during his team's match in Nîmes on February 1 .
"After examining the file and hearing the player, the committee has decided to sanction Gelson Martins with a firm suspension of six months. This decision takes effect from February 6, 2020," the LFP announced in a press release.
The Monegasque was suspended on a conservatory basis since February 6.
Frustrated by the exclusion of his partner Tiémoué Bakayoko at the half-hour mark, Gelson Martins came to shake up the referee Mickaël Lesage.
Expelled in turn for this gesture of humor, the Portuguese international had then reoffended, pushing with both arms the director of the game, at chest level.
The 24-year-old then apologized on social media for his "thoughtless attitude", denying himself to be "aggressive".
His gesture triggered many reactions in the soccer world, up to the president of the French Football Federation (FFF) Noël Le Graët having called to "firmly repress" this kind of act.
- Karembeu and Hadji too -
In its article 10, the "reference scale" of the FFF mentions the case of a "voluntary pushing" as being "the fact of coming into physical contact with a person by carrying out a pushing likely to make him move back or fall" . This text recommends a suspension of eight months when a player is guilty of this gesture during a meeting on an "official" (referee or delegate).
In the past, Christian Karembeu with Nantes in 1993 and Youssouf Hadji with Nancy in 2010 were suspended six months for jostling and intimidating an arbitrator. The sanction of the first had been reduced to three months on appeal, that of the second had been canceled by the administrative court.
Also in 2010, the Bordelais and captain of the France team Alou Diarra was given six games of suspension for having jostled the referee, a gesture for which he immediately apologized to the person concerned.
Gelson Martins was definitively recruited this summer from Atlético Madrid, who had loaned him six months to Monaco at the end of last season.
ASM N.11, born in Cape Verde and selected 21 times for the Portuguese team, is under contract with Monaco until June 2024. He will have to wait for the first day of the 2020-21 season to find the grounds in an official match.
- "Excessive duration" -
The club of Monaco reacted to this sanction in a press release where it regretted "the excessive duration" of the sanction.
"If the club once again condemns the unjustifiable behavior of its attacker, it regrets the excessive length of this suspension, for a player who has never known a disciplinary gap in more than 200 games at the highest level," said the press release. .
Despite the length of the sanction, the Principality club will not appeal, we learned from internal sources at the club.
"His attitude is neither acceptable nor forgivable," said Monegasque Vice President Oleg Petrov, who said: "He will be strongly penalized. And for my part, I will make sure that an attitude like this does not happen again. "
At his pre-match press conference against Nice, Monaco coach Robert Moreno said the player would continue to train with the club's first team while suspended.
"The situation is difficult," said Moreno. "But he will stay with the team. Having him work alone will be very difficult. It is a matter of psychology and respect. He is training well. We have to help him, even if he’s not doing tactical training to prepare for a match, "he said.
© 2020 AFP