The investigation of the magazine “So Foot” on abuses at the French Football Federation (FFF) and, in particular, acts of alleged harassment and sexual SMS from President Noël Le Graët continues to cause a stir. The monthly publishes in particular three extracts of undated SMS which would have been recipients of current or past collaborators of the FFF and sent by the Breton leader, aged 80. “Come to my house for dinner tonight”, “I prefer blondes, so if you like”, “you are awfully curvy, I would put you in my bed”, can we read. “It’s very simple, he jumps on anything that moves,” explains a former employee to the magazine.
Faced with these revelations, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, the Minister of Sports decided to summon the president of the FFF this Friday, according to information from RMC. And the National Union of Professional Footballers (UNFP), the players’ union, took the opportunity to challenge the minister directly in a press release, hoping that this meeting could be an opportunity to discuss “everything that undermines, sometimes for a long time date, French football and its federation”.
“Moral harassment, sometimes even physical, which tends to become commonplace”
“When acts of harassment are proven, all the more so if they are judged and condemned, writes the UNFP, it is then up to the FFF to pronounce sufficiently exemplary sanctions to discourage all those who, in French football, would like make fun of the values of our sport and have no respect for the human person. (…) However, the silence of the Federation, sometimes its contempt for the victims and – even worse – the assured and assumed impunity for certain culprits flout its duties and its mission.
“Faced with the latest and numerous proven cases of harassment in French professional football, faced with requests for protection of the prey on the one hand and sanctions against the damnable on the other, inaction continues to be rigorous in response to the life-saving fight led by our union” continues the union.
For the UNFP, something rotten in the kingdom of football must be cleaned up: “Many times alerted by the UNFP like all those who preceded it, the Minister is fully aware of an already worrying situation, with harassment moral, sometimes even physical, which tends to become commonplace in France against the background of the transfer market, trading, non-respect of contracts, personal interests… Practices unworthy of French football which they also put in great danger…”