The penalties are ultimately relatively lenient.

The disciplinary committee of the Professional Football League (LFP) decided on Wednesday that the match between Nice and Marseille, interrupted on August 22 after serious incidents, would be replayed on neutral ground and behind closed doors.

The committee also imposed on Nice a withdrawal of two points in the standings, one of which was suspended.

The Riviera club will also have to play three matches behind closed doors in total, including the one to be played again against OM and the one already served against Bordeaux as part of the precautionary measures taken just after the incidents.

On the players side, OM defender Alvaro Gonzalez, who threw balls in the direction of the Nice public, was suspended for two firm matches.

Dimitri Payet, another Marseille player, received a suspended one-match suspension.

An OM assistant suspended all season

The game was interrupted in the 75th minute after Payet, who was about to take a corner, was the target of ultra Nice supporters.

Hit in the back by a plastic water bottle, the playmaker returned the projectile to the audience.

Dozens of Nice supporters then invaded the lawn, causing a general fight between supporters, players of the two teams and members of the management of the two clubs.

Pablo Fernandez, an assistant to Argentinian OM coach Jorge Sampaoli, was suspended until the end of the season for punching a Nice supporter who entered the pitch.

"Serious incidents"

"This decision is up to the seriousness of the incidents which had an absolutely exceptional impact and which concern, all the same, a marked attack on the physical integrity of football players, which is obviously totally unacceptable", explained during a video-conference press the chairman of the disciplinary committee Sébastien Deneux.

"Despite the circumstances of this match, the behavior of Dimitri Payet and Alvaro Gonzalez appeared to us to be punishable on a disciplinary level", he also declared.

“For Payet, the sanction takes into account the fact that he was directly hit by a bottle and then hit by a kick from a spectator, which was not the case for Alvaro, hence the differential on both players, ”he detailed.

Justice

Nice-OM incidents: Five other people arrested and placed in police custody

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