“A Sunday of ordinary violence”. This is how Karim (first name changed at the request of the person concerned) begins the long message accompanying the video he posted on social networks. We see a fight that broke out at the end of a match between the under-20 teams of AF La Garenne-Colombes, where his 18-year-old son plays, and ES Trappes on Sunday October 23. The facts take place at the Gilbert Chansac stadium, in Trappes (Yvelines). A tense match, he says: “I felt that it was starting to smell of powder, that spectators were insulting our players so I pointed it out to the Trappes coach. He told me : You too, shut your mouth! I then walked away and, at the final whistle, around 5 p.m., it exploded. »
While Trappes lost 3 goals to 1, in this match which counted for the 1/16th finals of the Coupe de Paris U20, Karim then described an invasion of the field by “at least thirty young people, who seemed used to of this kind of outbursts and violence”. “It had already degenerated in a Gambardella match on another pitch, just before. The spectators then migrated to this match and they came to pour out their frustration, their need to assert their territory. The players from La Garenne-Colombes, including Karim’s son, were then prosecuted, some beaten. One of them, badly beaten, spent the night under observation with several open wounds in the head and a concussion.
A player was reportedly beaten by the linesman
More serious: Karim says he “clearly identified” a touch judge, part of the staff of ES Trappes, having “several times hit in the head” the young man most seriously affected, who will get away with points suture. Karim, he says he intervened between several attackers and his son, receiving a few blows in the process.
“My son won’t say it, but it shocked him,” he says. I think we avoided the worst. Parents would not have had the audacity to confront them. “The players of La Garenne-Colombes were chased to the doors of their locker room, “they waited for us to come out as a group to kill us”. Before the police are called, the group disperses and everyone can go home.
Monday, the day after the match, Karim files a complaint against X, on the advice of the police officers who intervened on Sunday evening. “Some people from the Trappes club wanted to dissuade me from filing a complaint by telling me: ‘it doesn’t matter, nothing will happen…’ They minimized the facts. There is a form of omerta, a general oppression in which it will be necessary to rush and according to which if you denounce, you are a balance, you are not a man. But we are not going to wait for a tragedy to act. Fortunately, a manager of the Trappes club apologized to us and encouraged us to do what was necessary with the institutions. We cannot impose violence as the only possible mode of expression. When contacted, the Trappist leader in question did not respond to our requests.
Since Sunday, Karim has been trying to alert the League of Paris-Île-de-France, organizer of the competition, but also the French Football Federation so that sanctions are taken. Requested, the Paris League has not, for the moment, responded to our questions on this file but assures that it will be dealt with “internally”.
