Faced with violence and death threats, Alsatian referees on strike

Anger does not fall on football fields in Alsace. After the referees’ strike at the end of March in the region due to death threats to one of their colleague, all the matches had postponed this May 1. But a new assault last weekend has strengthened the anger of men in black.

Alsatian football referees are on strike this Thursday. After death threats against a referee at the end of March, the departmental bodies had decided to postpone the meetings from the first weekend from April to today, on May 1.

But in the meantime, a new assault by referee took place last weekend. Struck in the head during a 5th division meeting, he was transported to the emergency room and suffers from several fractures on the face. What to push the referees of the department to make themselves unavailable again for this day of the championship.

Pressures, assaults on the ground, Guillaume, 32 -year -old Alsatian referee, recently knew them.

“When I got out of the stadium, there are some who threatened me. ‘We’re going to find you, you and your wife, we’re going to find your home, if I see you on land I take care of you’,” he says.

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Sanctions claimed

What to forget the pleasure of arbitrating. “We start from the match with the ball in the stomach we wonder if we are going to get out of it the following weekend,” he said. So Guillaume decided to end his young referee career. I also tired of undergoing these pressures, 439 of his Alsatian counterparts will not take the whistle this Thursday. An approach welcomed by Yannick Reeb, president of the Durrenbach club in the Alsatian first division.

“They are right, there is a fed up. I prefer that there are no more games until the end of the season, but that there are things that change. There are clubs that have still not understood the role they have in this sport. There are training to do, real educational work,” he said.

He demands harder sanctions for troublemakers. Jean-Claude, referee in Alsace for 14 years, has another idea in mind. “The players who behave badly, that we give them the whistle so that they live an hour which we live all season,” he said.

Last season 245 referees were attacked in the amateur world.