A supporter runs on the lawn of the Velodrome. Messi stops the ball. Security intercepts the intruder. The Classico between PSG and Marseille resumes under projectiles this Sunday evening, despite the protective nets put in place by the club.
The list of incidents is growing, but nothing has changed. As recently as last weekend, the Angers and Saint-Étienne players also suffered from this type of incident. Smoke, launched on the lawn of Geoffroy-Guichard by supporters, burned the goal nets. As a result, the kick-off was postponed for an hour.
Faced with the recurrence of these incidents, sanctions have been taken. Some matches like Nice – Marseille, interrupted fifteen minutes from the end of last August, will be replayed behind closed doors, on neutral ground. But this decision is controversial.
Why punish the 99% of supporters who do not cause any problems, because of a minority? We must decide. Last September on BFMTV, the Deputy Minister in charge of Sports, Roxana Maracineanu, urged clubs to resort to individual sanctions. But is that enough? Should we wait for the death of a supporter to react? Pierre Barthélemy, lawyer at the Paris bar, answers these questions.
France is renowned for its legal arsenal, among the most repressive in Europe. How to explain the multiplication of incidents in the stadiums for several months?
After the closed-door period due to the health context, we see similar incidents all over Europe. Sociologists see it as a phenomenon more cyclical than structural, which would result in particular from latent tensions in the post-confinement and curfew society which would be expressed in an exacerbated manner in the passionate context of a sports meeting and a catch-up effect. 18 months of absence.
“Clubs can act upstream”
Some sanctions have already been taken without success. What are the other solutions? Should we regularize the in camera despite its injustice?
In France, there are legal stadium bans (maximum 5 years, pronounced as a sanction by the criminal court), administrative stadium bans (maximum 2 years, or even 3 years in the event of a repeat offense, pronounced as a preventive measure by the prefects) and commercial stadium bans (maximum 18 months, pronounced by clubs against supporters who disregard their “contract” with the club). Individual sanctions are only dissuasive if they are implemented. But we prefer the ease of collective sanctions whose ineffectiveness and injustice have been demonstrated.
However, the solution lies in the individualization of sanctions. This makes it possible to rule out the perpetrators of incidents for a shorter or longer period depending on the seriousness of their behavior. The closed doors do not solve anything. The disciplinary committee tripled the number of closed doors for pyrotechnics, which had the effect of tripling this use – if there is a closed door regardless of the number of smoke, as much as light the triple -, and have no leverage of sanction against infinitely more serious facts (throwing projectiles, violence, intrusion on the ground, racism). The disciplinary committee itself delegitimized the collective closed session.
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We see similar scenes in Europe, recently at Wimbledon. Should each country determine its own sanctions, or is it up to Fifa to make joint decisions?
This must result, above all, from the justice of each country. Sports bodies must sanction clubs which have insufficiently anticipated and prevented incidents. On the other hand, it is up to ordinary criminal justice to investigate and punish supporters who commit offenses.
What can clubs do?
They can act upstream: improve the safety of infrastructures – in particular with protective nets, sealing between stands – and strengthen dialogue with supporters. Wherever there is a real referent-supporters, the tension has dropped sharply. After an incident, it is more up to the police and the judiciary to do the work of investigation and sanctions.
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