Tensions surrounding a French football team match. The Insoumis MP Louis Boyard asked on Friday for the cancellation of the France-Israel football match scheduled for November 14 at the Stade de France, but the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau said he was making its good performance “a question of principle” , while opening the door to a reduction in the gauge.
“I want this match not to take place,” declared Louis Boyard on Sud Radio, who is relaying a petition demanding the cancellation of this League of Nations meeting. The Blues won (1-4) in the first leg, played on October 10 in Budapest due to lack of being able to organize in the Hebrew state.
While the war that has been raging since October 7, 2023 in the Gaza Strip has spread to Lebanon, where Israel has been carrying out massive airstrikes against the Islamist Hezbollah movement since September 23, Louis Boyard invoked “article 4 of the FIFA statutes which explains that universal human rights must be respected.
The rebellious MP argued that the International Federation had “sometimes applied sanctions to other countries”, such as Russia, Belarus or South Africa. “But on the other hand, when it comes to the policy of the Israeli government, we do absolutely nothing,” he denounced, asking “that we put an end to double standards”, in the name notably the “42,000 dead” (43,204 to date) recorded by the Hamas government in Gaza.
But, for the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau, interviewed on BFMTV-RMC, the meeting will be held in Saint-Denis, “and we will of course adapt the security system”. Police prefect Laurent Nuñez had promised two weeks ago “an extremely reinforced security system which will be of a very high level”, both “outside and inside the stadium”.
Fewer spectators at the Stade de France?
In this context, could the gauge of 80,000 spectators be revised downwards? “This is a point that we are currently studying,” admitted the Minister of the Interior. “But what I wanted is for us not to move, for example to the Parc des Princes” which has 48,000 places, he continued.
Because, castigating LFI, which according to him seeks to “import the conflicts of the Middle East into our neighborhoods and into France”, Bruno Retailleau assured that the smooth running of this meeting was “a question of principle”. “We are in France and we must be able to enforce public order,” he insisted.
The environmentalist MP Sandrine Rousseau was circumspect about the initiative of her colleague from the New Popular Front. “Really, I don’t think it can be played out in a football match and I don’t get into that,” she evaded on France 2.
