The general director of PSG, Victoriano Melero, was received by Othman Nasrou, Secretary of State for Citizenship and the Fight against Discrimination, this Friday morning at the Ministry of Sports.
PSG will tighten the screws with its supporters, the government will be attentive. This is more or less what we must remember from the meeting which took place this Friday morning at the Ministry of Sports, in Paris, in the presence of the Secretary of State for Citizenship, Othman Nasrou, the Minister of Sports, Gil Avérous, the Paris police prefect, Laurent Nuñez, and the new general director of Paris Saint-Germain, Victoriano Melero. The FFF was also represented by Erwan le Prévost, director of international and institutional relations of the body.
Meeting requested by the government – and which was initially to be held at the Ministry of the Interior – two days after the deployment of a huge pro-Palestine tarpaulin in the Auteuil stand at the Parc des Princes, Wednesday, during the meeting between the players Parisians at Atlético (1-2). The members of the Ultras Paris Collective spoke of “a call for peace», PSG dissociated itself from this action (“The Club was not aware of the plan to display such a message and is firmly opposed to any message of a political nature in its stadium”), the Crif sees it as an act “intolerable» as much as one “call to hatred” and the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau believes that “this tifo had no place in this stadium”describing a gesture “unacceptable» and don't “not forbidding” to imagine sanctions against Paris-SG. “Sport is not politics, we must preserve unity”he swears. Note that UEFA, which nevertheless prohibits any political message in the stadiums of the competitions it organizes, will not initiate proceedings against the Rouge et Bleu.
Also read
Tifo “Free Palestine”: the leaders of PSG and the FFF summoned by the government to “explain themselves”
Anger has been expressed, it will not go away on its own. If the club's response is insufficient, it will be open to interpretation.
Othman Nasrou
Considering that the recent events, that is to say the homophobic chants during PSG-Strasbourg (4-2) on October 19 – PSG suffered a partial closure of the turn for a firm match – and therefore the Wednesday tifo, “cannot remain unanswered”the government sent a message of firmness, demanding that measures be taken, as reported by a participant in this meeting in Figaro. “Anger has been expressed, it will not go away on its own. If the club's response is insufficient, it will be open to interpretation.declared Othman Nasrou. And to add: “If there are no sanctions, the Interior Ministry will not be satisfied with them”.
Paris Saint-Germain, however, did not wait for government injunctions and proposed a certain number of measures, took a certain number of “engagements“. Thus, access to the Parc des Princes should be prohibited to the CUP for an indefinite period outside of match days. Like other groups of supporters, the Collectif Ultras Paris holds most of its events within the Porte de Saint-Cloud. However, this was not the case for the pro-Palestine tifo on Wednesday, according to the CUP.
The fact remains that PSG will now control the tifos upstream, in particular to guarantee the absence of messages of a political nature. Moreover, the question of a period without tifo in the Auteuil bend arises. Last but not least, “the club will continue to move forward on the issue of commercial stadium bans for individual cases”as reported by a witness to this meeting.
More information to follow…
