The sanctions were bound to be harsh vis-à-vis AS Saint-Étienne following the serious incidents that accompanied the relegation of the Greens to L2 against Auxerre. On May 29, after the penalty shootout recording the defeat of the Stéphanois, several hundred angry spectators entered the lawn. Some had molested players and stewards while others threw smoke bombs into the official stand.
Already subject to several sanctions after numerous deplored incidents this season, ASSE had to pay a high price for these excesses. The Forézien club thus paying for the softness with which it manages the extreme actions of some of its ultras.
The Disciplinary Committee of the Professional Football League revealed the sanctions on Thursday. :
Six penalty points, including three suspended, applicable to the 2022-2023 season.
Six games behind closed doors at the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium, including two suspended.
Concretely, Saint-Étienne will therefore start his season with a total of minus three points on the clock. And she will, therefore, have to receive her first four opponents without an audience. But at least the matches will take place at Geoffroy-Guichard while ASSE also feared that it would be forced to play them behind closed doors in another stadium, in this case that of Gueugnon. The Forézien club announced that it would not appeal. “Given the nature of the offending facts, AS Saint-Étienne has decided not to appeal the decision. The club appeals with seriousness to everyone’s responsibility so that these unspeakable acts never happen again at the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium, ”said a club press release this Thursday evening.
This sanction falls in any case when the club had entered into “exclusive negotiations with the American David Blitzer. And he was waiting in particular to know the exact severity with which Saint-Etienne would be treated. Now he knows that with three points and four games without his audience, the Greens have already complicated the task in their immediate recovery mission in L1.