Constable Daniel Nivel, seriously injured by German hooligans 25 years ago during the World Cup in France, will attend the meeting between Germany and France in Dortmund on September 12, the German federation announced on Tuesday. “The federation will warmly welcome the Nivel family to Dortmund. I am very happy that they have accepted this invitation,” Bernd Neuendorf, president of the German Football Association, said in a statement on Tuesday.
The French gendarme was attacked by a group of German hooligans on June 21, 1998 in Lens, before the World Cup match between Germany and Yugoslavia. He had been in a coma for six weeks. He has since been hemiplegic, has lost his sense of smell and taste, and is blind in one eye. “Daniel Nivel’s courage to live and the courageous attitude of his wife Lorette move me,” explained the president of the German federation.
Already invited in 2006 and 2016
The gendarme has already been invited several times to attend meetings, during the World Cup in Germany in 2006 or more recently during Euro 2016 in France. Before a League of Nations match in Paris in October 2018, then German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas awarded him the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
After the attack, the German federation had notably built a house for his family and created a foundation in his name aimed at preventing violence, in collaboration with international football bodies and the French Football Federation.
