Football – Coupe de France: telescopic baton, bat, knife… players attacked and several injured in violence after a match

This post-match should have been a celebration for the amateur club of Anstaing-Chéreng, qualified for the seventh round of the French Football Cup, Sunday October 27, after its victory against Lomme decided following the penalty shootout. . Instead, scenes of chaos, and an afternoon that turned into a nightmare. After this meeting between two clubs located in the surroundings of Lille, the pitch was invaded and several supporters claiming to be from the Lommoise team attacked players and members of the club.

“Amateur football is tarnished this evening by these images and this vision of horror caused by a group of pseudo-opposing supporters who had just come to fight: who comes onto a sports field with a telescopic baton, a bat, a knife…?”, wrote the Anstaing-Chéreng club on its Facebook page. The team based east of Lille specified that “three players (had been) molested with a bat and beaten on the ground”, that “a mother from the club (was) currently in hospital” and that “a young club volunteer (was) going to have to have a nose operation.”

“They are coming to demolish our players”

The club president Gaëtan Plancq, who provided information to the gendarmes on Monday afternoon, tried to explain the facts to AFP. “The players are celebrating with our supporters, and there are around fifteen pseudo-supporters who arrive to demolish our players. The videos are shocking […] There were ten to fifteen minutes of total nonsense” before the intervention of the firefighters and then the police, he added.

Three complaints were filed on Monday, and others should follow, including that of the club, said Gaëtan Plancq. Opposite, the Lomme club expressed Monday on Facebook its “deep regret regarding the regrettable incidents which occurred at the end of the meeting”, which “were not initiated by people dismissed from our club, but by individuals external influences of which we are also victims. “We strongly condemn the unacceptable behavior that took place,” the club continued.