Will professional football players and supporters succeed in getting out of the crisis? While the French football authorities are determined to fight against homophobic slurs in the stands, they face the risk of an escalation of supporters dissatisfied with sanctions deemed unfair and a lack of dialogue with the competent authorities. And Wednesday night, while the disciplinary committee of the LFP pronounced sanctions for incidents of previous meetings, the same homophobic songs were sung at the Allianz Riviera, where Nice received Marseille, causing an interruption of the meeting for ten or so years. minutes.
Will the LFP crack down?
Wednesday evening, the disciplinary bodies of the Professional Football League met to decide on the incidents in previous meetings. And the disciplinary committee has imposed on the club Nancy (L2) the suspension of his tribune Piantoni for a firm match. But for the other cases examined, she only called to order, saying that they were "insulting remarks".
In the face of new incidents, should authorities hit harder? "The question may arise, but it is not up to the minister, alone, to answer," says one to the Ministry of Sports. In theory, the LFP Disciplinary Committee can impose even greater penalties by ordering in camera matches or by withdrawing points from the team.
Did the league want to go too fast?
But the incidents of the last few weeks and the Wednesday night meeting of the Disciplinary Committee did not put an end to the provocations. Wednesday night, so it was the meeting Nice-Marseille which had to be interrupted about ten minutes because of homophobic songs and banners. And already, in the late afternoon, the fans of Lille had briefly sung "the Stéphanois are fags ...", without provoking this time of reaction on the ground.
For Jean-François Pérès, head of the sports department of Europe 1, these incidents could happen again. "We saw yesterday in Nice, we'll see him again this weekend," he warns. "These insults, these interruptions of match, it became a game for supporters who have a complicated relationship with the authorities". Indeed, the ultras are already up against a policy they consider too safe and recurrently ask to relax smoke bans and travel restrictions to attend meetings.
"We have opened a Pandora's box and there will still be epidermal reactions," said James Rophe, spokesperson for the National Association of Supporters (ANS). The fault, according to him, to the haste of the government and the League. "We went from 'nobody says nothing' to 'we must stop everything', without dialogue with the supporters and without definition work", he adds, while according to him, "the work is necessarily long".
For Jean-François Pérès, "these scenes only highlight the absurdity of these measures when one could for example imagine a round table or a Grenelle between clubs, authorities, public authorities and associations of supporters".
A meeting on September 5th, the first step towards a better dialogue?
The dialogue between the two parties could resume on September 5, during a meeting between the associations against homophobia and the National Association of supporters, in the presence of the LFP. "A first step," for Jean-Francois Peres, while the initiative was welcomed by the Minister of Sports, Roxana Maracineanu.