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Far from calming down with the coercive measures applied to the most violent supporters, violence has increased in recent weeks on the sidelines of football matches. Hence a new punch on the table of Amélie Oudéa-Castéra this Monday, November 4.
Is this the point of no return? Will the death of an FC Nantes supporter on the evening of Saturday December 2 cause the authorities and clubs to change the management of their most violent stands? “Basta, that’s enough. We cannot continue like this in football,” thundered this Monday, December 4, the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, for whom this is the umpteenth cry from the heart in recent months, without anything really moving.
Attack on the OL bus in Marseille, rocking of the Brest supporters’ bus, attack on little Enzo during a match between Ajaccio and OM: far from calming down with the coercive measures applied to the most problematic supporters, violence has increased in recent weeks on the sidelines of football matches. Recently, Lille supporters were unable to travel to Marseille to attend the match on November 4, and Marseille fans were unable to go to Nice to support OM on October 21.
And on Saturday evening in Nantes, a 31-year-old man was killed during an altercation, when several VTC vehicles transporting Nice supporters were attacked by Nantes supporters. A VTC driver was taken into custody on Sunday.
“A radical situation, radical measures”
Questioned on France Inter, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra responded “with caution” on this specific case, because “the prosecutor must now establish the facts to the end”. But more generally, the minister considered that it would be preferable “for the moment to stop on the movement of supporters” in the event of a risky match. Faced with this new episode of violence, the Minister of Sports wants “a global initiative, a global response and to a radical situation, radical measures”. “It’s just not possible that we have law enforcement that is so stretched, property destroyed, buses stoned, people injured, now a dead person,” she said.
“We can’t continue like this in football, it’s not possible.”
The Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra (@AOC1978) calls for “radical measures” after the death of a supporter in Nantes this weekend, particularly regarding fan travel.#le710inter pic.twitter.com/cjjTFHKOpp
— France Inter (@franceinter) December 4, 2023
Saturday evening’s match was classified as level 2 according to the National Anti-Hooliganism Division (DNLH) scale. This means that it was admitted that there was a “degraded context likely to generate deviant behavior on the part of the supporters” for this meeting and that the police had precise directives in terms of numbers and deployment. .
Orders prohibiting the movement of supporters are already regularly issued for so-called risky matches. The Bouches-du-Rhône Prefecture has thus banned the arrival of Lyon supporters in Marseille, for the Ligue 1 match which is to be played on Tuesday. Initially scheduled for October 29, this meeting did not start due to the stone crushing of the bus transporting the OL players to the Vélodrome stadium, which notably caused a facial injury for former Lyon coach Fabio Grosso.
After these incidents in Marseille, the images of which had made the rounds on social networks, the Ministers of the Interior and Sports had placed the blame on the clubs, singled out for the behavior of some of their supporters, “including sometimes outside the stadium. Gérald Darmanin explained that half a thousand police officers and gendarmes had been mobilized to secure this match. There had therefore been “no failure” on the part of the police. It is necessary “perhaps more systematically to prohibit the arrival of supporters”, he suggested then.
