The Reims players delayed the start of their Ligue 1 meeting on Sunday February 27 in protest against “acts of war“Russians in Ukraine, according to the president of the club, in favor of an action”symbolic” on the lawn of Monaco, whose leaders are Russian.
“Despite all the respect I have for the Monaco club and for its leaders, we had to symbolically show that we were totally in disagreement with the acts of war carried out by Russia there.“, explained Jean-Pierre Caillot at the microphone of Prime Video before the meeting.
We’re going to put our little pebble in the building
Jean-Pierre Caillot, president of the Stade de Reims
Scheduled for 1:00 p.m., kick-off was given at 1:05 p.m. For a few minutes, the Monegasque players waited in the hallway leading to the lawn, while the Rémois remained in the locker room.
“We have a Ukrainian player in our women’s team who has all her family there, we have people in the club who have family in Ukraine. If through symbolic actions we manage to regain calm and this war stops“, justified Mr. Caillot.
AS Monaco is managed by the Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, president and owner, his compatriot Oleg Petrov, occupying for his part the position of vice-president and general manager. The oligarch made his fortune in the Russian group Uralkali, a world giant in potassium fertilizers, of which he owned 65% until 2010.
Reims has “communicated“his action”at the last moment“to his opponent of the day,”but we don’t want to make them uncomfortable“, clarified Mr. Caillot. “I have a lot of respect for Oleg Petrov. It’s politics, we stay in sport but we want to show at the level of our club a strong and symbolic action“.