Weekends tend to be the same in Ligue 1. Clashes between supporters, agitation in the stands or physical damage to players, football is struggling to get out of this climate of extreme tension. Dimitri Payet took the pen, Wednesday, December 15, in the pages of the newspaper Le Monde [article payant] to express his fed up on the eve of an interministerial meeting on violence in stadiums.
“I was the victim with the most media coverage, even if I am not the only one to have been attacked in a particularly cowardly and unacceptable way”, underlines the Marseille player.
On August 22, in Nice, during the third day of Ligue 1, Dimitri Payet had returned, in the Popular South stand, a bottle of water that he had previously received, causing the invasion of the lawn by several dozen of Niçois. One of them had kicked Payet (a gesture for which one year imprisonment of which six months suspended sentence was required).
⚽️ “Unbearable”, “fist”, “mess”, “stupidity”: the press review the day after the violence during the meeting between Nice and Marseille. #OGCNOM https://t.co/bCCNIWxIBC
– francetvsport (@francetvsport) August 23, 2021
New episode on Sunday November 21, at Groupama Stadium in Lyon, when a bottle of water thrown from the stands struck Dimitri Payet in the left ear near the corner post, in the first minutes of the poster for the 14th day between Lyon and Marseille, the match finally stopped definitively.
It is not the prefect who is on the ground, nor the prosecutor, nor the delegate of the League, nor the presidents of Nice, Lyon or Marseille. It’s the players, it’s us who are killing ourselves. And in this case, I’m the one who shoots the corners. Do I have to stop pulling them? Stop playing ? Tell me.
“I was hurt as much by the bottle as by the impression of being responsible for the violence and the stoppage of the match. I say stop! (…)”, hammers in his stand the player of the Olympique de Marseille.
Far from being an isolated case, the acts of violence have multiplied this season. “I am surprised that the actors – the government, the league, the clubs – do not take up their responsibilities a little more. It is an unbearable form of collective resignation “, he emphasizes.
That the givers of lessons come to play five minutes in a stadium on fire and stop parading in the presidential platform.
The striker called on the interdepartmental meeting not to minimize these acts and to give better consideration to the players: “The players are us, if we don’t feel protected, we can’t play.”