PortraitAfter a decade at the head of the French Football Federation, the Breton leader, 79, is considering running for a fourth term.
The question will have waited for the middle of the interview. Delicate to pose. How are you, M. Le Graët? The president of the most powerful sports federation in the country, that of football (2.1 million licensees, 321 employees under contract), says he is “Completely healed”. He had already beaten cancer in the 2000s. Here he is now recovered from leukemia, revealed in 2018, shortly before the world title of the Blues in Russia. “I have never missed a ‘comex’ [comité exécutif] or a meeting with a sponsor in the last three years, he assures. I used to say to the hospital, “No, no, today I have to go out.” Perhaps the exercise of my mandate kept me going, helped me morally. “
Noël Le Graët, born on December 25, is 79 years old. Almost ten of which have been president of the FFF, a position he has held since June 2011. “If the manager is in good shape, age doesn’t matter. I know 50-year-old people who can’t run a shop “, he emphasizes in his office at 15e arrondissement of Paris with a view of the Eiffel Tower. The statutes of the “3F” authorize it to consider a fourth term: no limitation, unlike other federations. At the end of it, after the 2024 Olympics in Paris, he would then turn 83.
Le Breton has until February 11 to announce his candidacy, the elective assembly being scheduled for March 13. Many see him leaving for a ride. Undoubtedly from January 21, during the next “comex”. “I still believe that, if I represent myself, it will surely be my last. But we never know… ” In fact, he had already requested “One last term” when he was re-elected in 2012. Then in 2017. That year, he was in Martinique, where he owns a house, when he decided to run again, “During a walk on the beach”. “My wife was already telling me to stop. “For the upcoming ballot, in good politics, he let two candidates reveal themselves: Frédéric Thiriez, the former boss of the Professional Football League (LFP), and the entrepreneur Michel Moulin, despite his prison sentence. suspended sentence in the so-called match-fixing case of Nîmes, in 2014.
Almost octogenarian, Noël Le Graët “ only lives for the FFF, otherwise it withers “, Assures Eric Borghini, one of the members of the” comex “. Until then, “NLG” has withstood everything, the test of time as well as the vicissitudes of its sport. “There is something Mitterrandian about him, analyzes the businessman Jean-Claude Darmon, his ex-opponent in the League. A very fine strategist, he needs to exercise power in order to live. ”
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