Laurent Blanc evacuates the case of Dejan Lovren, OL rookie and lover of fascist songs and salutes – Liberation

The Rhone coach clumsily tried to play down the controversy surrounding the arrival of the 33-year-old Croatian rookie, filmed three weeks earlier taking up a nationalist song and making a fascist salute during festivities following the 3rd place of Croatia at the Qatari World Cup.

Eighth in the League standings, in other words a little on the picky side given its status, Olympique Lyonnais has decided, to strengthen itself for the end of the season, to recall a former member of the club, Dejan Lovren. Already spent on the banks of the Rhône from 2010 to 2013, winner of the Champions League with Liverpool in 2019 and finalist of the 2018 World Cup with Croatia against the Blues, the defender from Zénith Saint-Petersburg is a face familiar with European football.

What the microcosm of football did not know, however, is that the international defender can indulge in fascist chants and salutes. In mid-December, the Croatian was filmed with his teammate and Inter Milan midfielder, Marcelo Brozovic, loudly resuming the fascist chant “Za Dom Spremni” (literally “Ready for the fatherland”) banned by the law, proclaimed during the Second World War by the Ustashi, a pro-Nazi Croatian movement, during the celebrations which followed the third place of the country at the end of the World Cup. All accompanied by an outstretched arm salute mimicking a pistol. A gesture used by the Ustashi and taken over by paramilitary groups during the Yugoslav wars.

Moreover, another video taken a few days earlier, during the World Cup, already showed several players from the Croatian team celebrating their victory over Brazil in the quarter-finals by covering a song from the repertoire of neo-fascist singer Marko Perković, member of the Thompson band. The song alludes to the former Croatian Republic of Bosnia “Herceg-Bosna”, a sort of self-proclaimed puppet state during the wars in Yugoslavia, whose leaders were held responsible for crimes against humanity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In April 2022, the same Lovren took dislike to Disney on the networks for a homophobic motive. We see it in a tweet posted in April 2022 in the process of canceling its subscription, in reaction to the company’s recent statements in support of the rights of LGBTQ + people.

“I look at the athlete”

Not enough to put off the recruitment unit of OL, which decided, despite all the nauseating extra-sport risking to disturb the club, to sign the Croatian. Thursday, Laurent Blanc, coach of Les Gones recently returned to the bench after several years of exile, did not escape questions about the far-right acquaintances of his new recruit. His answers are evasive to say the least. On the nationalist song: “It’s a nationalist song for the liberation of his country”, White shamelessly evacuates. The Nazi salute? “It’s… It’s… How hard that sounds but you’ll definitely ask him”stutters this time the former coach of the Blues, adding that he cannot “not answer for him”.

Relaunched once again on the fact that he condemns these actions or not, Laurent Blanc hides behind the sportsman, and the so convenient reality on the ground: “Listen… Me, I saw, I saw… so maybe it doesn’t sound very in-depth to you, but I saw the thing he could bring as a player to the club. He is a good recruit as a footballer. Looking at the man, that’s your judgement. I watch sports. I saw a very respectful man with his family, his children, his wife. Relaunched one last time on the shocking nature of such behavior, the one who defended ten years earlier the policy of discriminatory quotas in the France team still takes out the oars: “There are so many shocking things right now… There are a lot of shocking things, and you can understand that. But here we are in a sports press conference.

This comeback of a player with such a pedigree in the French football landscape does not seem to move the French sports institutions either since to date, neither the French Football Federation (FFF), nor the Professional Football League, organizer of the French championship, or the Ministry of Sports had not reacted to the transfer.