Tribune. After the end of the meeting between Lyon and Marseille, Sunday, November 21 in Lyon, due to a bottle throwing at a Marseille player, and after several incidents in the stadiums, French football must come out of its inbreeding to find adapted solutions.
Disasters never happen by accident. They always occur after being engulfed in faults of which one did not know – wanted – to perceive the importance at the time. The multiplication of incidents in French stadiums is the consequence of a slow structural erosion of Ligue 1 clubs. They are now faced with a desperate swing of the pendulum.
Sportingly, the “League of talents” has never been so efficient and attractive, its results on the European scene prove it. But, at the same time, she has never been so fragile and vulnerable. She suddenly lost control of her financial equilibrium after having been confronted, in quick succession, with two imponderables.
First, the final end of the 2019-2020 season, in April 2020, due to the health crisis. Undoubtedly too docile and too quickly resigned, it was the only major European championship to find itself in such a scenario, which had serious economic consequences.
Eight months later, the failure of the Spanish audiovisual group Mediapro, unable to honor the chimerical contract of 762 million euros per year for the acquisition of domestic television rights to Ligue 1 for the period 2020-2024, was another stop. This sum is still below the cumulative losses of French football, which greatly exceed one billion euros.
Strict rules
Since the start of the season, in a pernicious domino effect that follows the law of the series, professional football has also been overwhelmed by some of its supporters, and its stadiums are no longer safe or recommendable places.
This public safety issue is part of an endless ping-pong game that began several years ago. Public authorities and clubs tirelessly return the ball to it in a sterile and unnecessary conflict which is based on an ambiguity: the club is responsible for security inside the stadium and the State outside.
Still, there is no doubt that if there are serious incidents inside the stadium, there will also be outside. The first urgency is therefore to get out of this cold and unhealthy war. It is necessary to develop a real doctrine of the maintenance of order in the stands and outside, and to define strict and unavoidable rules for decreeing the end of a meeting. This would avoid an ubiquitous and burlesque scene, like the one that took place in Lyon on November 21. To the point of reaching the height of hypocrisy and the sense of irresponsibility and to make believe that the referee of the meeting could be the only culprit of such chaos.
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