This Wednesday, at the Cugnaux theater, the Haute-Garonne district will unveil an awareness clip to stop verbal and physical violence on the edge of the pitch every weekend. This little film should over the days go around the world of football to denounce more and more serious cases of violence noted by the district. We met Abdel, an educator attacked at the start of the season and who decided to throw in the towel.
Punches and broken sternum
Last September, as the season started, Abdel told a child returning from vacation in Morocco that he would have to observe a week without training since the country was on the red list because of Covid and that a period of quarantine. “He was going to miss just two sessions, Wednesday and Friday. Except that on Wednesday, I was surprised to see him arrive with his father. Very aggressive, he brings his child back by force. Dad comes to see me, insults me, jumps the fence and punches me. We both fall to the ground. My assistant comes to separate us and takes a nudge: broken sternum for him. Fortunately, a relative called the gendarmes. If it hadn’t been for them, I think there would have been a murder that day.“, explains Abdel.
The two men filed a complaint, the parent’s trial will be held in Toulouse at the end of June. Abdel, he decided to stop everything: “It’s my last year. It’s clear and clear, it’s getting too dangerous. We’re there for their children and we’re thanked that way. It’s getting complicated. In the minds of parents, their children are Cristiano Ronaldo or Mbappé. They are in their bubble. They sell false dreams to their children and that is very serious. It’s a nightmare, we don’t sleep well. I think about it every day. At 61, taking a punch in the face and ending up on the ground, you don’t easily forget. On the psychological side, we are really destroyed. Destroyed.”
Abdel: “It has to stop”
According to this educator, the risk of seeing volunteers give up because of violence is immense: “Amateur football is very threatened. When there are no more volunteers, there will be no more football. We sacrifice ourselves for others but when it starts to affect our safety and our health, then we reach another stadium. Being forced to bring in a kid to avoid a tragedy, it’s not possible. The kids have nothing to do with it, it’s the parents, but at some point we’ll have to decide. You need exclusion. People will tell me that it’s not the children’s fault, but I too have children. I don’t want to leave him an orphan. We are there on the pitch but we are not sure of returning in the evening.”
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