The president of the French Football Federation, Philippe Diallo, defends the holding of the match between the Blues and Israel at the Stade de France on Thursday evening in a security context under high tension.
“It’s the great return of the French team to its historic lair”rejoiced Philippe Diallo, president of the French Football Federation, in the columns of the newspaper The Parisian this Wednesday. But the party will only be partial Thursday evening. The Blues will host Israel for the 5th and penultimate day of the League of Nations, in an extremely tense climate due to the geopolitical context.
“We demand that the match between France and Israel be canceled”Mathilde Panot, head of the La France Insoumise (LFI) group, declared on Tuesday in the National Assembly. Organize the match elsewhere than in Saint-Denis ‘was never an option’swore Philippe Diallo, for whom “playing at the Stade de France was also an element of optimizing security conditions”.
Diallo is aware of the “anxious context”
One of the downsides will be the colossal number of empty seats. Only 20,000 spectators are expected in an enclosure which can accommodate 80,000. The recent lack of attractiveness of the Blues, the absence of Kylian Mbappé, the concern of families regarding security or even the boycott by certain people of the meeting explain this low enthusiasm.
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“We would obviously have preferred that the Blues played to a sold-out crowd”regretted Diallo who does not avoid the “anxious context”. “I thank everyone who will make the trip. It’s up to us to offer them complete serenity to watch 90 minutes of football”he summarized. 4,000 police and gendarmerie officials as well as 1,600 security agents will be mobilized for this Thursday’s match, as detailed by the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau.
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