Scandal in French football due to the embarrassing acts of some fans… Never ending story.
The French Professional Football League (LFPF) deck sanction the A series for some songs intoned by his ultras making fun of the Argentine Emiliano Salalegend of Nantes who died in a plane crash in 2019, reported this Thursday L’Équipe.
These songs (in which “Emiliano sous l’eau” is heard, “Emiliano underwater“) happened during Wednesday’s league match against Saint-Étienne, four days after Nice lost 1-0 in the French Cup final against Nantes, Sala’s last team.
According to L’Équipe, the LFPF disciplinary commission could sanction the club from the south of France at its next meeting on Wednesday 18 by applying the regulation that seeks to prevent “any behavior that violates morals or ethics and constitutes an affront to the honor” of some of the football players.
Thus, the Allianz Riviera could be partially closed and the Nice could be penalized financially. “The song of shame“, as the French press has branded it, included this stanza: “Emiliano underwater, Emiliano underwater, he is an Argentine who did not swim well“.
Both the club management and the coach, Chistophe Galtier, were very tough against the ultras. “If whoever comes to the stadium reflects society, we’re in shit. If it is to insult the dead, let them stay at home“exhorted the DT, visibly indignant at the end of Wednesday’s game.
The Populaire Sud ultras, authors of the chants, published a statement this Thursday showing their incomprehension for “trying to discredit them.” “We perfectly understand the emotion that the lyrics of those songs have been able to arouse, irony is part of the ultra culture“, they point out.
Sala died at the age of 28 in January 2019 when the plane in which he was traveling to Cardiff – he was going to sign with the club in that city – crashed in the English Channel, near the island of Guernsey.
The body of the Argentine was found, while that of David Ibbotson, the pilot, was never found. In October 2021, David Henderson, the man who arranged Emiliano Sala’s trip to Cardiff, was found guilty on the charge of “endangering the safety of the aircraft” and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
