Portuguese midfielder Monaco Gelson Martins was suspended six months on Thursday by the disciplinary committee of the French Football League (LFP) for jostling the referee during his team's French Championship 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.
24-year-old apologized
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.
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).
Gelson Martins arrives after a series of precedents
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, has 21 caps with Portugal.