Scuffles erupted Saturday afternoon in the city center of Sedan, in the Ardennes, between Dutch and Bastiais supporters a few hours before a match of Nationale 2 (4th division) between Sedan and Bastia, leaving at least six injured including one serious, we learned from the authorities.
While the match is scheduled for 6 pm, the incidents began "around 1:30 pm" between dozens of Bastian supporters and "a Dutch group", said the Ardennes prefecture, adding that "six people were injured including one seriously". According to the firefighters, the injured were taken to hospital, one of them "in absolute emergency".
Dutchmen "come for the fight"
These Dutch supporters "a priori came for the fight. These are uncontrollable elements very difficult to detect", continued the prefecture, for which "their motivations certainly have nothing to do with sport". The Bastian supporters involved were themselves "independent of the club, came on their own" unlike the few hundred spectators who left Beauty Island by plane.
"There was a 'fight' (...) quite fast. A hundred Dutch attacked 50 Bastians", detailed Philippe Miziniak, departmental director of public security (DDSP) of the Ardennes, adding that the injured were mainly Dutch. In the middle of the afternoon, calm had returned to the city center, according to the prefecture, which deplores only "slight degradations", like "degraded garbage cans", but "no broken windows or affected businesses" .
"They fell on us"
According to several witnesses, messages have multiplied in recent days on social networks, "inviting" Utrecht supporters to Sedan. "We were quietly at the bar, and they fell on us. It's amazing. We have no rivalry with Sedan, it's not like Nice or Marseille where we know it can be tense. didn't last very long, "a Corsican supporter told an AFP correspondent, not wishing to give his name.
This displacement of the SC Bastia to Sedan is a shock between the first two ties of group A to go up in N1. More than 9,000 spectators are expected, including a thousand from Corsica.
In March 2007, during an L1 Sedan-PSG match, incidents had already broken out in Sedan between a hundred Utrecht supporters and PSG supporters. Utrecht supporters used to attend major football matches in Sedan since the tribute paid by the Ardennes club to their former player David Di Tommaso, after his death in November 2005 while he was under contract with the Dutch club.