The Stade de Reims is in shock. The Ligue 1 club learned this Sunday of the suicide of Bernard Gonzalez, 60, the doctor in charge of the first team. Affected by Covid-19, he was in confinement at home with his wife, also infected. He left a detailed letter explaining the link between his gesture and his contamination.
Arnaud Robinet, the mayor of Reims, says he is stunned. It was the prefect of Marne who told the city council the news in the early afternoon, under the seal of confidentiality. The elected representative knew this doctor well, who represented, according to him, one of the pillars of the Reims club “, and had participated in his recovery in Ligue 1 by taking very good care of the players. “He was the club doctor, he says. A great professional, recognized and appreciated by all ”.
Immense shock within the club
Arnaud Robinet had met the doctor about a month ago as part of an aperitif that the practitioner’s parents had organized during the municipal campaign for the outgoing mayor. “I have a touched thought for his parents, for his wife, his family,” said the mayor. He is a collateral victim of Covid-19, because it had been detected positive and was in his fortnight. I know he left a note to explain his gesture. But I ignore its content. “
Doctor Bernard Gonzalez had set up a large office in a redeveloped area of the city. “He was a committed and very human man,” says Arnaud Robinet.
At the Stade de Reims, the shock was immense. No one was aware of the tragedy this Sunday afternoon. Or even that Doctor Gonzalez had Covid-19. “I spoke to him last week and he never brought up the subject,” said a club member. It’s incomprehensible. What a drama. It will now be necessary to warn the players and the staff. The shock will be terrible. “
In the early evening, Jean-Pierre Caillot, the president of the club, expressed his emotion on the club website. “Words fail me, I am stunned, prostrate before this news,” he writes. This pandemic affects the Stade de Reims in the heart, it is a personality of Reims and a great professional of the sport who left us. His mission to the club of more than 20 years has been carried out with the utmost professionalism, in a passionate and even selfless manner. Doctor Gonzalez, in the harshest periods of the club, thus worked on a voluntary basis. (…). He is my personal doctor, and today all my thoughts, those of the club of which he will remain a strong figure, go to his wife and his parents. Today it is a drama that strikes us. “
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