“Sound and fury. » This is how we could, in two words, summarize the meeting between Nantes and Le Havre, played last Sunday as part of the 12e day of Ligue 1. Beyond the defeat of the Canaries, their 9e match in a row without a victory, what especially stood out was the attempted pitch invasion of “70 to 80 supporters » from the Tribune Loireaccording to daily information West France. Enough to cause a half-hour interruption when we were already in added time. In the first period, the referee had already had to stop the hostilities for several minutes following the throwing of tennis balls and rolls of toilet paper, again coming from the Loire Tribune. Enough to make the tenants of Place Beauveau very angry, who, according to OFwould have « very seriously” studied “the launch of a procedure to dissolve the Loire Brigade”the main ultra group of the stand of the same name and which would count, according to The Teamaround 3000 inserts, or half of the spectators present in the Beaujoire bend.
Two days later, this Tuesday, a twist: in a press release, the Ministry of Sports announced that « firm individual sanctions rather than collective sanctions are to be favored: we must concentrate more in the short term on the 70 to 80 individuals who tried to invade the field and pronounce exemplary bans as quickly as possible in order to avoid new excesses for the next matches. » With these words, the former mayor of Châteauroux Gil Avérous publicly disavows his first colleague in France, Bruno Retailleau, and tries to put out a fire that has spread widely against its author: shortly after the revelations ofWest Francemessages of support for the Loire Brigade multiplied on the web and – lo and behold – these did not only come from supporters of the Canaries, but from groups from all over France.
Ministerial cacophony
It would indeed seem that the Minister of the Interior has moved a little hastily. Unlike groups like Ferveur Parisienne (formerly known as Porte 411), dissolved in December 2022 by former Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and Retailleau's predecessor, Gérald Darmanin, the Supras Auteuil or the Brigade Sud de Nice , victims of the great purge of April 28, 2010 carried out by Brice Hortefeux, the Loire Brigade is not recorded in the register of associations Law 1901 (even if a document available on its site claims the opposite), but as a “de facto group”, which means, according to the Ministry of Sports, that « the dissolution would necessarily take place over a long time and the troublemakers could always go to the stadium ».
Hence the idea of carrying out individual, and not collective, sanctions. If Gil Avérous passes through Beaujoire during his major stadium tour, he could take the opportunity to meet the local representatives of the National Supporters Association (ANS). On this point, the two parties could well agree.
The end justifies the means
In the meantime, there is no point in denying it: by their brutal, spontaneous nature, and accentuated by the crowd effect and the intimidating appearance of the hoods worn by certain supporters, the images could have been shocking. This does not mean, however, that we must take them at face value, nor speak of “ pseudo-supporters », on the grounds that in the Loire Tribune, FC Nantes is encouraged with more virulence than in the presidential election and that the anger towards the management, considered responsible for a shaky sporting project and hardly encouraging results, is more openly marked there. .
Ultimately, even if its means of action appear less diplomatic, reducing the Loire Brigade, and more generally the ultra supporters, to thugs thirsting for gratuitous violence would be as stupid as automatically demanding the dissolution of a group which he moves in a specific context in the heart of a football stadium which, like it or not, does not belong exclusively to consumer spectators. The BL has already proven it in the past, it also knows how to invest constructively in fights which concern all Nantes supporters. Just one example: that of Yello Park, whose project was officially buried in 2019, testifies to the in-depth work that the group demonstrated, until history proved it right, as well as the All the supporters' associations who fought against the fad of a new stadium in Nantes. Whether you like it or not, football needs a counter-power in its stands, an itch that gives a different voice from that of the governing bodies. This is, after all, the very principle of a team sport.
The Ministry of the Interior would like to dissolve the Loire Brigade of FC Nantes
