INTERVIEW
The French football championship found an unprecedented outcome with the decision of the Professional Football League (LFP) to end the season and freeze the classification on the 28th day. The penultimate Amiens SC pays the price for this policy and will play in the second division next season. The president of the club Bernard Joannin nevertheless filed an appeal before the administrative court.
"The board of directors of the League should have shown humanity, a humanity often inherent in the world of sport," he said on Tuesday at the microphone of Europe 1.
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"Unfair, inconsistent and unfounded"
"We find that this decision of the board of directors of the League is unfair, incoherent and unfounded," laments Bernard Joannin, recalling that ten matches, or more than a quarter of the championship, remained to be played. "We had to meet our three direct competitors who were placed right in front of us [Nîmes, Saint-Etienne and Dijon] during these ten matches."
At the mention of the financial consequences of a descent into Ligue 2, Bernard Joannin replied: "What interests us is sport. We are not looking for damage and interest!" His club had known its apotheosis with access to Ligue 1 in 2017, after a completely crazy scenario on the last day of Ligue 2.
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"When I arrived at the head of this club in 2009, it was really with local entrepreneurs. We are from Amiens, we wanted to give back to the city what it gave us," he adds. . A petition launched online to request the cancellation of relegations and a Ligue 1 to 22 clubs collected more than 17,000 signatures on Tuesday.