This Thursday morning at the headquarters of the French football federation, a meeting of the Comex should be content with administrative questions without addressing the burning file at the heart of the storm that the institution is currently going through: the resignation or not of Noël Le Graët. This Comex is mainly intended to put a little formalism in certain decisions. It will be used to write the minutes of the last five Comex, and in particular that of January 11, where the provisional withdrawal of Le Graët was decided after his lunar declarations towards Zinédine Zidane.
In the statutes, the “withdrawal” does not exist. Same thing for the conservatory layoff of Florence Hardouin, the general manager. The Comex did not have the legal power to do so… It will therefore be a question of transcribing these decisions into the minutes, with the appropriate formulations. On this occasion, Philippe Diallo, the interim president of the FFF, should announce his candidacy for the UEFA Executive Committee.
More expected, the second part will concern the observations that the Comex intends to make following the provisional audit report sent last week by the inspectors of the General Inspectorate of Education, Sport and Research (IGESR). In this pre-report, the inspectors considered that Le Graët no longer had “the necessary legitimacy to administer” the FFF given “his behavior towards women, his public statements and the failures of governance” internally.
The mission also collected testimonies relating to the actions of the Breton leader “likely to receive a criminal qualification”. Noël Le Graët has until February 13 to comment on the partial report sent to him. He should not be present this Thursday and still does not seem to want to resign.
His lawyers still claim that the former mayor of Guingamp feels a “deep sense of injustice” in the face of this audit mission, which they say was subjected to “political and media pressure which could only skew it”, and which takes the form of a “legitimacy trial (…) The virulence of the words used with regard to Mr. Le Graët is surprising in view of the emptiness of its factual basis, which is based on truncated and anonymous elements and testimonies. »
For her part, Florence Hardouin, who is awaiting her interview prior to a possible dismissal scheduled for February 21, should contest the grievances made to her in the same report by the IGESR inspectors.