Le Stade du Ray once again hosted a rather dismal spectacle on Saturday night. Just a month from the League Cup final that will see Nice face AS Nancy Lorraine, the match counting for the 31st day of the championship escalated into a confrontation between the 22 players, ending in a free-for-all as soon as the final whistle blew. Whose fault was it? An attempt at explanations.
While the French football world and others try to portray us as the resident brutes, and while our supporters are in the crosshairs of a few people who claim to be “worried about the rise of violence in French stadiums,” it’s important to put things into context.
As a regular in the stands of our good old Stade du Ray, I have witnessed unacceptable behavior on the football field by the opposing team’s players numerous times. I play football myself and even though the professional level is supposed to be more demanding than any other, it is hard to understand certain behaviors. And Saturday night’s match is the most blatant proof of this.
One can be late to the ball and commit a fault. One can commit a foul to waste time. But the actions performed by André Luiz on Koné or on Vahirua are unworthy of a football match and have no place on a sports field. And what is tragic is that this is not the first time, far from it. Ilunga, the St. Étienne defender, had already had nasty actions towards our playmaker which would have deserved the ultimate sanction. And he is not alone. The whole stadium remembers the entrance of the young Lille player Mirallas, who went straight to contact Cyril Rool and delivered an elbow to the jaw, earning only a simple yellow card. And the examples are numerous. What about the play of Jurietti or Faubert, Maicon, Diego Perez, Diarra, or Armand?
So far, out of the 31 Ligue 1 matches played by Frédéric Antonnetti’s men, 8 have ended in a numerical advantage. And there would certainly have been more if the referees had done their job correctly in protecting the most targeted players.
I am talking, of course, about Bakary Koné and Marama Vahirua. The former, a real menace to defenses with his technique, speed, and agility, is the number one target. His track record in Ligue 2 last season has earned him a reputation as a certified scorer, and Nice’s opponents were warned from the start of the season. It’s a miracle he hasn’t yet sustained serious injuries this season, as it’s not uncommon to see him limping out of the stadium at the end of matches.
The same goes for our Tahitian player. Marama’s technique baffles opposing defenders. His oriented controls and dribbling often confuse and push defenders to commit fouls. But there’s a foul and then there’s assault. Most of the time, real assaults are committed against our players, and with all the objectivity in the world, it cannot be denied.
And we must also count on the presence in our ranks of Cyril Rool, a player who honors the jersey he wears and who today suffers from his reputation gained over his previous seasons among the elite. Opposing teams systematically seek to provoke and destabilize him. And as he is under the scrutiny of the referees, there is no forgiveness. So yes, he has been often warned but he has never been expelled this season.
But there are limits to everything. And Nancy has blatantly exceeded them last Saturday night. At the bottom of the fair play rankings while OGC Nice is in the top 5, AS Nancy stands out this season for its rough play across the hexagon. Future opponents in the League Cup final, their attitude cannot be seen as an accident. As the Nice coach rightly says: “What happened cannot be accidental. In my opinion, it was completely premeditated. In the first half, there were several brutalities on Vahirua and Koné. I think they wanted to break them in two. With Nancy, we really don’t play the same game. We try to play football.”
So it promises a lot for April 22 because we will have to overlook this first round and re-enter the arena with the greatest attention. Often, the prerogative of smaller teams is to impose a harsh and virile game because they do not have the means to compete differently. And that is the case with Nancy this season, not Nice. The new OGC Nice has arrived, and with it, a new way of playing. The game of today’s gym has nothing to do with the one proposed by Gernot Rohr’s men during their promotion to Ligue 1. The group has gained in maturity, experience, and also in technique thanks to boys like Vahirua or Bellion.
So please, gentlemen referees, protect the artists and technicians. For several seasons now, Ligue 1 has been experiencing a slump in efficiency, and the football world is wondering. And it seems to me that the violent play proposed by some teams is a beginning of an answer, right?