The French championship match was disrupted due to an attack by Marseille fans on Lyon players

The issue of combating violence at football matches was given urgency by the high-profile emergency in France. The match between Marseille and Lyon was disrupted by fans of the Marseille club, who threw stones at the bus in which the visiting team was traveling to the stadium, causing serious damage to its coach Fabio Grosso. What makes this incident especially unpleasant, according to French experts, is the fact that it could have an extremely negative impact on the outcome of the competition for the acquisition of international media rights to the country’s main football competitions: they have so far been less in demand than in other Big Five countries.

The French state of emergency turned into one of the loudest news of the past weekend not only for French, but also for all major European media resources. It happened on Sunday evening before the match of the tenth round of the French championship, in which two famous clubs met: Marseille, located in the middle of the table, hosted Lyon, which had unexpectedly settled in its basement.

The Lyonnais traveled to the Stade Velodrome arena that hosted the game by bus. On the way to the stadium, a group of people, presumably Marseille fans, suddenly appeared near him and began throwing stones and beer bottles at the windows. As a result of the attack, Lyon head coach Fabio Grosso and his assistant Raffaele Longo received particularly severe injuries due to glass fragments. Videos taken by bystanders shortly after the bus arrived at the Stade Velodrome clearly show Grosso being placed on a stretcher with his face badly cut. It turned out that almost simultaneously six buses carrying Lyon fans to the match were attacked in a similar manner.

His players initially wanted to take the field, but later abandoned these plans.

Referee Francois Letexier approved the cancellation of the match, given the absence of Grosso, as well as the “morale” of the players of the Lyon club, whose president John Textor admitted in an interview with Prime Video that he was “very angry” about the incident.

“Marseille” in its official statement, dedicated to him, condemning “cruel behavior that has no place in football and society as a whole,” nevertheless emphasized that, in his opinion, “a handful of fools” were to blame for the emergency. From Lyon’s point of view, which pointed out that similar attacks, albeit with less dramatic consequences, occur almost “every year”, the problem is much deeper. The club called on the country’s football and sporting authorities to recognize its “seriousness and scale” “before it becomes a more serious tragedy.”

The authorities actually responded quite quickly to the Marseille incident. The French Football League (LFP) immediately convened an emergency meeting based on this, although without making any specific decisions based on its results, but only stating that further steps would be developed by the commission of the competition structure. “Marseille” hopes that it will not punish him in the form of deprivation of points, but will authorize the postponement of the match to a later date. French Sports Minister Amelie Oudéa-Castera announced that police had detained the possible perpetrators of the attack and said football and sport must be “vigorously cleansed” of “acts based on stupidity and hatred.”

For LFP, the Marseille incident may have a noticeable “negative spillover effect.” L’Equipe noted that the scandal, covered by all leading European publications, erupted a few days before the end of the competition, in which international rights to domestic French football tournaments for the period from 2024 to 2029 are at stake. The winner is scheduled for November 2. These rights have remained a weak point in French football until now. Largely due to their low demand, the French championship was inferior in terms of revenue generated to the leading “Big Five” championships. Foreign media rights to French tournaments under the current agreement bring in €82 million a year. In Spain their cost is about €800 million, in England it is more than two times more. LFP hoped that under the new contract it would be able to increase the amount to €200 million. L`Equipe believes that the spread of terrible pictures with a bloodied Fabio Grosso around the world could put an end to these hopes.

The International Football Federation (FIFA) also drew attention to the emergency. Its president, Gianni Infantino, spoke in the same spirit as Ms. Udea-Castera.

Meanwhile, the Marseille events definitely add relevance to the topic of combating cruelty and violence at matches that has appeared on the agenda of key football departments.

Last week, the International Association of Professional Footballers (FIFPro) published a list of “preliminary trends” regarding player safety issues. They were introduced to the Council of Europe with the aim of adjusting and strengthening control over the implementation of the provisions of the so-called Saint-Denis Convention on a Common Approach to Safety, Security and Services during Football Matches, adopted in 2016. This document provides for preventive measures and sanctions for acts of violence and hooligan behavior during competitions, such as bans for stadiums and countries to host them and travel restrictions for violators.

FIFPro believes that it is necessary to more carefully monitor the implementation of the provisions of the convention, since after the coronavirus pandemic there has been a “radical increase in cruelty and violence against players in their workplaces – on the field, at the stadium, in the locker room, on the bus on the way to the match, on the training ground and even online.” Among FIFPro’s initiatives is the widespread introduction of “personalized tickets” – something similar to the Fan ID system used in Russia.

Alexey Dospehov