The first concrete reaction to the violent death of a football fan in France is the tightening of travel bans for supporters to so-called risky games on foreign pitches.
The French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera indicated corresponding plans for short-term implementation at the beginning of the week and received support from the league association boss Vincent Labrune.
“It can’t go on like this,” said Oudea-Castera in a radio interview with France Inter: “If a game represents a risk, then it’s better that fans of the away team can’t travel in the first place.”
Last Saturday, an FC Nantes supporter was killed in riots before the Ligue 1 game against OGC Nice. According to information from the public prosecutor’s office, the autopsy revealed stab wounds to the chest and shoulder as the cause of the 31-year-old’s death. The accident in Nantes represents the sad low point of a terrible development for French football, after excessively brutal riots by hooligans from various clubs had repeatedly shaken the professional sector in the past few months.
Oudea-Castera wants to take rigorous action in view of the renewed escalation: “For an extreme situation, we need extreme measures. It simply cannot be possible for our security forces to be so overwhelmed because property is destroyed, buses are thrown with stones and people are injured. Now is one more person died – that’s enough.”
League boss sees state authorities as having a duty
Like the minister, who wants to expand travel bans for fans from a one-off measure to a standard instrument in combating football violence, Labrune is also striving for concerted and cross-border action by as many agencies and organizations as possible.
“Supporters who are directly or indirectly responsible for most public order violations or, as is now the case, tragedies, must no longer be able to travel with their teams.”
The league boss sees state authorities in particular as having a duty: “Ensuring security for its citizens is the state’s most important task.”