The French government on Monday condemned violence by Marseille football fans on Sunday, during which the visiting Lyon team’s bus was pelted with stones and beer bottles, and Lyon coach Fabio Grosso was injured by shards of glass.
“Dismay, revolt, disgust. Then, obviously, a feeling of empathy, enormous thoughts for the coach, for the team, for the assistant coach, for the supporters,” said French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra on television channel France2.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on French channel BFMTV demanded an end to violent scenes at football stadiums and said nine arrests have been made so far.
Oudéa-Castéra added that “what we saw in this stadium [is] almost all of what we do not want to see: homophobic remarks, racist signs.”
The French sports minister added that “all the perpetrators of these unacceptable actions will have to be very severely punished.”
French football has been repeatedly rocked by violence in recent years, with several incidents of fan unrest in cities including Montpellier, Nice and Saint-Etienne. In November 2021, the then-sports minister said fan violence was putting French football’s future at risk.