Gilles Verdez stood out on the set of Do not touch My TV. This Thursday, May 12, the program received Gilles Favard, football consultant for the L’Équipe channel, to react to the behavior of certain Nice supporters during a meeting against AS Saint-Etienne the day before at the Allianz Riviera stadium in Nice. A diverted song, referring to the fatal plane crash of which Emiliano Sala, a former Nantes player, was the victim, resounded in the stands. A scandal to which the president of the club of Nice reacted in a press release, condemning the comments of the supporters and reaffirming his support for the relatives of the missing footballer and his former teammates. A speech far from sufficient for Gilles Favard.
“It’s disgusting, I have no other words because it’s premeditated. This song needs to be prepared. (…) What does the president of Nice do for the security of his stadium?” he got angry. Words that made Gilles Verdez react. If the latter condemned the way of acting of the supporters in the wrong, according to him, Gilles Favard attacks the president for the wrong reasons: “If you are against that, it is because you have worked for a long time with the president of Nantes, you have a history all the same. (…) you attack [à lui] because you don’t like it. You put all Nice supporters in the same basket, I think it’s not worthy.“
Beginning to get annoyed at the defense of his interlocutor, Gilles Verdez ended up indicating that Gilles Favard had put a spoke in his wheels in his career: “You reported me when I was doing my job. He prevented me from working, he put me on blacklists, he was violent with friends of mine, colleagues, he jostled them for a long time, insulted them, he prevented them from working.”
The basic debate therefore turned to personal settling of accounts for Gilles Verdez: “You are biased, you go after Nice. No doubt they didn’t want to hire you as you sell yourself everywhere without any success.“Gilles Favard obviously replied, which made the columnist come out of his hinges:”Of course, you’ve never worked! You were supposed to be an agent. Don’t come piss me off! You pretended to be a football agent, you’re only scheming, you sold players, they weren’t even yours! Oh stop! Tell Cyril what you did, player agent of my two! ‘I go to the presidents, I take a little com’ and everything, I ruin the clubs!’ (…) Don’t hit the poor people who go to the stadium okay, be dignified, retire in silence!“Or how to approach football in a real boxing fight…