There is lasting uneasiness between Bernard Casoni, the coach of US Orléans (National) and his players, as reported by France Bleu Orléans this Monday.
Coach in Loiret since June, Casoni, 62 years old, more than 200 matches with OM, winner of the 1993 Champions League, and 30 caps with the Blues, is accused by five Orléans players of making racist remarks on a recurring basis , accusations corroborated by several club leaders.
Some of the incriminated remarks were even made publicly and recorded at a press conference.
On September 21, on the eve of the match between US Orléans and Châteauroux, the coach, who knew that the France Bleu Orléans microphone was on, gave the following response: “They (the players) have things in which they excel. But there are things where it’s not enough. This is where you have to be more efficient, where you have to erase that. My role is to tell them, show them and help them solve problems. That’s it that’s all. I did it in all the clubs I went to, I did it with North Africans! They are no more stupid than North Africans, eh…”
INFO FRANCE BLEU ORLÉANS – Bernard Casoni, the former international, ex-player of Olympique de Marseille, current coach of US Orléans, accused of repeated racist remarks pic.twitter.com/n7ayriKUVp
— France Bleu Orleans (@FBOrleans) October 9, 2023
Casoni, who played for Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian clubs, would regularly use his formula: “You are no more stupid than North Africans…”
Another notable slip-up, in mid-August, reported by an Orléans player, and confirmed by a teammate: “We were doing an exercise where two teams face off five against five. My team consisted entirely of players of color. There, the coach says: “No need for bibs for them, they are already black”, supposedly in a humorous tone. It shocked me…”
Later, a few days before the resumption of the championship, a player, as a joke, let out a loud fart in the locker room. Casoni exclaims: “That’s a black fart.” “I looked at my teammate next to me, we said to ourselves, the coach is really very limited,” says one player.
Furthermore, the coach, described elsewhere as willingly brutal and humiliating in his management, would have asked for the US Orléans squad to be “whitened”…
Casoni refutes these accusations of racism, and benefits from the support of its president, Philippe Boutron.
“My sentence about the North Africans at a press conference is to tell my players that they are as intelligent as North Africans,” Casoni told France Bleu Orléans. I never asked to clear the squad, I simply want there to be a balance in the team. A community should not be over-represented. If there are too many Creoles, it’s not good. The same if there are too many Africans or too many whites.”
“I’m a guy from the south, it’s football, it’s just chambering,” Casoni finally pleads, as for the sentence relating to chasubles. Today, we can no longer say anything. »
The president, for his part, supports his coach: “Your objective is to kill the club,” he tells France Bleu Orléans. You are in the business of destruction. You do like in the Christophe Galtier affair. Bernard Casoni certainly had some language blunders but he is anything but racist. There is no racism in football. »
