The latest arrival of Stade Toulouse in Créteil hysterized the city and its immediate surroundings. Could the phenomenon nevertheless be reproduced?
I'm one of the rare guys to have seen the first three matches that Racing played in Créteil since the start of the season. So I was there, the first time, the day the Racingmen welcomed Clermont to general indifference. Then the second, for the return of this joker Ronan O'Gara to Île-de-France. And even the third, the day when Ciel et Blanc and Varois produced in these places one of the worst encounters in the history of the single hen.
I'm not going to lie to you: the atmosphere at the Duvauchelle stadium had never before been overwhelming, so much so that the very first time, at the beginning of September, no one at the club dared to tell us how many spectators were there. scattered in the stands, to see Jaunards and Ile-de-France residents duke it out. We then wrote 4000, from memory…
“I quadrupled my turnover!”
And then? Almost everything has changed, south of Paris, one autumn afternoon. Everything changed, in fact, when the French champion from Toulouse and his legion of French internationals showed up in the enclosure usually reserved for the Lusitanos of Créteil. And on Saturday, the Duvauchelle stadium, packed with Toulouse residents and the like, made noise. In the center of Créteil, hundreds of supporters even gently shook this large city (90,000 inhabitants) to which we so often attach the term “dormitory”. In a restaurant on Avenue François Mitterrand, for example, the owner had difficulty hiding her happiness: “We didn’t expect that at all. Compared to an ordinary Saturday, we almost quadrupled the turnover! »
This weekend, to host the most bankable team on the old continent, Créteil went out of its way. And if we can't swear that the atmosphere will be similar next Saturday for the kick-off of a preliminary phase of the Champions Cup which generally excites no one, it was more than pleasant…
France
