It was accompanied by a heavy police escort that the Israeli selection bus reached the Stade de France this Thursday for the Nations League match against the French team.
A high-risk and ultra-secure meeting. It is in a climate that is to say the least heavy that Didier Deschamps' Blues host Israel this Thursday (8:45 p.m.), at the Stade de France, with the ambition of securing their ticket to the quarter-finals of the League of Nations. The sporting stakes of this meeting in Saint-Denis, however, find themselves largely overshadowed by the geopolitical context.
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With a total of 4,000 police officers and gendarmes mobilized, both around and in the stadium, as well as on public transport and in Paris, the security system is intended to be exceptional. It was further reinforced after last week's violence on the sidelines of a Maccabi Tel-Aviv match in Amsterdam in the Europa League.
Retailleau and Nuñez present in the security PC
The Stade de France, whose capacity is 80,000 seats, will ring a little hollow since only between 15,000 and 20,000 spectators are expected for this meeting counting for the fifth day of the League of Nations. This should therefore be the lowest attendance in the history of this stadium for a football match (36,842 spectators for France-New Zealand in 2003).
Shortly after 7 p.m., the police force was particularly important to support the arrival of the Israeli selection at the Stade de France. Numerous vehicles and dozens of motorcycles made up the procession. The Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, and the Paris police prefect, Laurent Nuñez, were present in the security headquarters of the Stade de France.
“I want to reassure those who listen to us and at the same time display a message of firmness. We will have means which will allow us to be extremely reactive to prevent any disturbance of public order, either during the match, in the around the match or on the path of spectators, we will not tolerate any excess,” declared Laurent Nuñez on the set of BFMTV last Sunday.
“We are capable of securing the Stade de France, which hosted the Olympics. We have drawn the consequences of what happened for the final of the Champions League in May 2022 (Liverpool-Real),” he said. added.
