The sight was sad. But few people will be able to say that they saw him at the Stadium. The French team, held in check by Israel on Thursday evening (0-0) in this fifth day of their League of Nations group, recorded on this occasion the worst attendance in its history at the Stade de France with only 16,611 spectators . The previous “record” dates back to June 2003 and a Confederations Cup match against New Zealand (5-0), followed by 36,842 people in the Saint-Denis arena.
These records obviously do not take into account the matches played, with reduced capacity, during the health crisis. But despite the impressive security measures deployed during this meeting against the Israelis, no restrictions on the public had been put in place by the authorities. Only the front rows of the Stade de France were prohibited from entering to prevent potential invasions of the pitch. Outside of Saint-Denis, the Blues had not played in front of so few people since the match against the Faroe Islands played in Guingamp in 2009, in front of 16,000 people.
The French Football Federation had anticipated this disaffection, since it was only counting on the arrival of a maximum of 20,000 people on Thursday. To what should we attribute it? Difficult to say, between heavy security context, unexciting opponent, late sale of tickets or even desire to boycott the poster. An internal survey among the French Irrésistibles, the main group of French supporters, on the absence of the majority of members in the stands for this match attributes it in order to the absence of days off (34%) , the tension around the match (30%) and the desire to boycott (15%) due to the invasion of the Gaza Strip after the attacks of October 7, 2023.
But incidents still broke out in these very sparse stands. A fight between Israeli and French supporters caused crowd movements in the north stand, then behind Mike Maignan’s goal, in the first period. The stewards intervened to separate the two groups for the remainder of the match. Two people were arrested and taken into police custody.
4.95 million people followed the match on TF1. This is better than the first leg in October, when only 3.98 million viewers watched the victory of the Blues (4-1) in Budapest, the worst TV audience for the France team in five years.
Related News :