“There will be no disciplinary case since the banner displayed cannot be considered provocative or insulting in this specific case,” indicated the spokesperson for the body.
UEFA will not initiate any proceedings against Paris SG for the pro-Palestinian message deployed Wednesday evening by its supporters before the Champions League match against Atletico Madrid, the body told AFP on Thursday. “There will be no disciplinary case since the banner displayed cannot be considered provocative or insulting in this specific case,” said his spokesperson.
Article 16.4 of the European body's disciplinary regulations allows for the sanctioning of “any provocative message unsuitable for a sporting event”, in particular “any provocative message of a political, ideological, religious or insulting nature”. It therefore does not ban all political proclamations from football stadiums, but only those deemed “provocative” or offensive, a criterion for example applied to homophobic banners and chants, as well as to the monkey cries of Hungarian supporters during the Euro- 2020.
Wednesday evening at the Parc des Princes, the ultra supporters of the Auteuil stand held an imposing tifo with the message “Free Palestine”, around the red and blue colors of PSG, with a bloody Palestinian flag, the flag of Lebanon, Jerusalem, tanks or a person wearing a keffiyeh. The immense canvas bearing drawings and covering the entire Auteuil stand topped a banner “War on the ground but peace in the world”.
“No to unacceptable excesses in the stands of our stadiums”
The club assured in a press release that it had no “awareness of the plan to display such a message”, and said it was “firmly opposed to any message of a political nature in its stadium”. The president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, Yonathan Arfi, deplored a “scandalous banner” on X, described as a “call to hatred”, before the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau in turn condemned the supporters' initiative. “This tifo had no place in this stadium, and such messages are also prohibited by the regulations of the League and UEFA. If this were to be repeated, it will be necessary to consider banning tifos for the clubs that do not enforce the rules,” he wrote on his X account.
Thursday morning, Sports Minister Gil Avérous added to X by calling on PSG to “respect the rules” of the competitions “in which it is engaged”. “No to unacceptable excesses in the stands of our stadiums. Sports fields must not become political forums,” he said.
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