Daniel Riolo does not have his tongue in his pocket. The listeners of L’After Foot on RMC, the program presented by Gilbert Bribois, in which he has been involved for seventeen years to dissect football and its multiple affairs in complete transparency, can testify to this. If this freedom of tone has sometimes played tricks on him, this PSG enthusiast does not hesitate to say and write things that annoy. Sound 16e book, co-written with Abdelkrim Branine, Chaos Football Club (Hugo Sport editions), which comes out on April 12, lifts the veil on the chaos in which French football is entangled, between affairs at the French Football Federation, those affecting internationals like Paul Pogba or N’Golo Kanté or again the aggression suffered by Kheira Hamraoui, player of the women’s team of PSG.
Point : What was the trigger for this book?
Daniel Riolo : The book should originally have been called Ghetto Football Club. We wanted to take an interest in the entourages of the players with my co-author Abdelkrim Branine. I had an idea that I had been dragging around for a long time: starting from what happened to French international N’Golo Kanté [il a été victime d’escroquerie mais aussi de menaces et d’intimidations, NDLR] and expand on racketeering in the soccer world. It is a new phenomenon.I had trouble finding people to work with on this file: many didn’t want to, often for fear of reprisals. I then met Abdelkrim, who knew the subject well and had a good understanding of how human relations work in this environment of petty crime around football and professional footballers.
The idea is therefore to take an interest in the entourages of the players, the pressures exerted, the rackets, etc. Quite simply the idea that there is a big cake, the player and his contract, and that a lot of people around them want to take advantage of it too. Like a territorial struggle.
This is exactly what we have seen recently with the Pogba affair, right?
She reassured us in a sense and even reinforced the idea that we had been right to take an interest in this phenomenon. We were all speechless in front of this affair during the summer… Then the Hamraoui-Diallo affair, in stride. These are also the two big cases that are developed in the book.
READ ALSOPogba case: “The first thing that came to me was panic, fear” We then asked ourselves the question: “Why settle for what was happening in the close entourage of the players. Have you seen what is also happening at the French Football Federation? “Finally, we tried to touch a lot of business around football. We could have gone further and we felt frustrated at the end, because we are currently in a context of repeated business around football, but also the illegal exercise of the profession of agent that you have to fight. If we add the internal affairs in certain clubs like, in France, the PSG or the SCO of Angers…, French football seems very difficult to manage seen from the outside.
You say in the book that about the Kanté and Pogba affairs the FFF was aware but did not act.
I think they are just unable to intervene, they are overwhelmed by events. There are a lot of people internally, especially right now, who think a lot more about their place and their interests than about each other’s concerns.
The Pogba affair, the Hamraoui-Diallo affair… In your opinion, are these two isolated episodes, two epiphenomena, or, on the contrary, the tip of the iceberg?
These two cases are in themselves “Netflix series” with their galleries of characters and twists. But pressure on players is more and more common. You have to understand that Paul Pogba is a star in the world of football. What happened to him is quite surprising. An agent told me during the investigation: “You know, you should never put pressure on someone very famous. This is the best way to attract the police immediately. »
READ ALSOFootball and organized crime: very dangerous liaisonsIt must be remembered that almost no one mentioned the racketeering of which Blaise Matuidi had been the target. For N’Golo Kanté, we hardly talked about it when he had been the darling of the France team during the World Cup in Russia in 2018… He suffered deeply from all this. We are still talking about pressure on his family and on himself. It’s no joke. The investigators who follow his files confided to me: “We are convinced that it will end badly, that one day people will shoot each other. “The people who operate in this environment realize that racketeering a football player is “easier” than drug trafficking, it’s “easier” to act legally by associating with an agent, for example.
We were not far from it in the Hamraoui-Diallo affair…
We’re talking about the case of a player assaulted with an iron bar… It’s a total delirium! And there are still people who doubt the police investigation. That lawyers do their job by trying to ensure that eavesdropping does not exist is one thing, but that it is relayed by influencers like Romain Molina [journaliste indépendant qui possède une chaîne YouTube avec 288 000 abonnés, NDLR] who does not realize that he has been exploited and who, as the only answer, questions the work of the police, we have reason to wonder.
After reading the book, it seems that this file particularly marked you. For what ?
I did not know Kheira Hamraoui. Then I come across this case, I document myself. I don’t meet either side. The only one I see is the coach at the time, Didier Ollé-Nicolle, who was dragged through the mud in this affair. It’s horrible: he has been attributed stories of sexual assault, a judicial investigation for “sexual assault by a person in authority” has even been opened. It’s disgusting since he was cleared afterwards…
It is therefore he who will tell me the story and advise me to meet Hamraoui. I only meet her on March 2, 2023; she is accompanied by her agent. We talk, she tells me. I then discover how much she is a victim, how much she takes it, while continuing to play with her teammates. I ask him during this unique meeting: “But how did you do it? She replies: “It’s not up to me to leave. What I expected was for the club to take action…” He is a fascinating person of courage.
Your previous book was titled Dear French football. Aren’t you even more worried today for its future?
Basically, my dream is not necessarily that everything becomes perfect. I am a journalist, my job is to report information. So I’ll keep bringing them back, whether they’re good or not. The next big topic in football will revolve around transfer-related stories. The illegal exercise of the profession of agent will become a very big problem. All these people who are also trying to “crunch” on transfers, it’s a problem!
Just look at the case of the new coach of Les Bleues, Hervé Renard. He went to sign his contract at the FFF with an undeclared agent. The Federation found nothing wrong… But I don’t have to be optimistic or pessimistic. I will continue to tell what is happening from the inside.
Chaos Football Clubby Daniel Riolo and Abdelkrim Branine (Hugo Sport editions), 18 euros