A mysterious email, a sulphurous whistleblower, a rotten sporting context and one more bomb at the feet of PSG. Since the evening of Tuesday April 11 and the revelation of a message allegedly written by his former superior, Christophe Galtier, the PSG coach since last summer, is accused of having repeatedly made racist remarks and discriminated against his players because of their religion. Facts – dating back to the period when he coached OGC Nice (2021-2022) – that he affirms this Wednesday “dispute [r] with the greatest firmness”. Release takes stock of this new affair which is shaking the club of the capital, at a time when it is entangled in yet another crisis between poor results and complex management of its stars.
Why is this case coming out now?
The bomb went off, once again, from the independent journalist Romain Molina. In a video published on his YouTube channel on Tuesday April 11, this character apart from the French press, which is very followed on social networks, balances: in an email sent at the end of last season to the sports director of Ineos – the owner of the ‘OGC Nice -, Julien Fournier, ex-director of football of the club, accuses Christophe Galtier of racism. “Yesterday I went to the restaurant and everyone came across me saying that we have a team of blacks”, would have complained Christophe Galtier from August 2021 to Julien Fournier. And the coach adds: “We are in the city of Jacques Médecin [maire de Nice de 1966 à 1990, également député pendant deux décennies et un temps secrétaire d’Etat au Tourisme sous Valéry Giscard d’Estaing]and our team is not what people want.” A judgment that had no “no sporting argument but only religious or color arguments”lamented in his email Julien Fournier.
In the same letter, the former football director of Nice explains that after this exchange, his relationship with Galtier was strained throughout the 2021-2022 season. According to Laurent Fournier, “the arrival of the Ramadan period was the scene of absolutely incredible scenes” and would have “forced to intervene again” : “The weeks leading up to Ramadan were a time for Christophe Galtier to continually complain that we had ‘too many Muslim players’ in the squad while taking care […] to take refuge behind the fallacious argument of the non-compatibility of the practice of Ramadan with the performance of high-level sport. Julien Fournier also mentions Christophe Galtier’s desire to “limit the number of Muslim players as much as possible” in his team, proposing the departure of some of them. The coach would also have opposed the recruitment of Turkish central defender Ozan Kabak, also because of his religion.
So many elements of which Bob Ratcliffe, the president of the football branch of Ineos and owner of OGC Nice, would have been made aware. According to Romain Molina, the management of Nice would not have answered him, therefore confirming or denying nothing of these accusations.
Did other journalists know?
It is common knowledge that the relationship between Julien Fournier and Christophe Galtier was chaotic to say the least in Nice. But no one really knew the reasons for these tensions. In September, when the two men had left the club, Julien Fournier remained vague on this subject in the After foot program on RMC radio: “If I explain the real reasons why Christophe and I argued, he will no longer enter a locker room in France and Europe. These are much more serious things than football.” Words that particularly resonate today.
???????? “If I explain the real reasons why Christophe and I had a fight, he will no longer enter a locker room in France and Europe. These are much more serious things than football”
Julien Fournier looks back on his chaotic relationship with Galtier in Nice. pic.twitter.com/wVjaDoNpB0
— After Foot RMC (@AfterRMC) September 28, 2022
According to Romain Molina, “there are other journalists who have [eu accès au mail]it’s been months and months, but no one wants to talk”. Tells him that he received this email “not so long ago”, without saying more. At the end of September 2022, in an article on the Galtier-Fournier relationship, the team was already talking about the coach’s criticism of “the sociology of his locker room” with “profiles that do not fit the identity of the city”. There are also mentioned the disagreements between the two men on Ramadan, Christophe Galtier judging that an athlete “cannot fully express his potential on match day while being weakened by imperfect nutrition and hydration”. So many facts that the leaders of Ineos and PSG were aware of, according to the sports daily.
In RMC’s After Foot on Tuesday evening, journalist Daniel Riolo also said that he had heard rumors in the hallway for several months about Christophe Galtier, but that Julien Fournier refused to explain his remarks, or to send him the documents allowing him to understand them. It was finally through another intermediary – he does not say which one – that he would have received the same email as that revealed by Romain Molina on the night of Saturday to Sunday. Daniel Riolo says he then left “one week to identify everything and make an appointment with the people concerned”in particular because the email in question did not have a header, before “to swing everything there is to swing”.
Faced with the revelations of Romain Molina, Daniel Riolo explains having “accelerated the procedure” and be able to confirm that the email has “really was written by Julien Fournier”.
How did the main stakeholders react?
According to RMC Sport, the management of PSG opened an internal investigation on Wednesday to try to see more clearly. If PSG obtains confirmation of the comments made by its coach, “the departure of Galtier is beyond doubt., says RMC. Until then, the club counts “let Galtier speak publicly to expose his version potentially before the match-eve press conference scheduled for Friday”.
Through the voice of his lawyer, the coach says this Wednesday afternoon “disputes (r) with the greatest firmness” the charges, and announce “prosecutions” judicial proceedings to come in the face of these “offensive and defamatory remarks”.
The Collectif Ultra Paris for its part declared in a press release “closely follow the Galtier affair” and plead for his dismissal “if the facts with which he is accused are proven”.
On the side of OGC Nice, silence is in order for the moment. Julien Fournier, now sports director of the Parma club (Italian second division), reacted this Wednesday in Nice morning “I am in no way responsible for the dissemination of this year-old internal information at the time of my departure from the club. I have never fired on an ambulance, despite all our differences with Christophe Galtier and above all I have too much respect for OGC Nice […]. The timing of these revelations revolts me as much as their content. The subtle art of getting rid of their release in the press… without denying the content.
It remains to be seen the reaction of the players concerned, whose names are mentioned in the email revealed by Romain Molina: Amine Gouiri, Jean-Clair Todibo, Youcef Atal, Hicham Boudaoui and Mario Lemina. Gouiri and Todibo have already hinted in the past to have had problems with Christophe Galtier, without discussing the subject. As for Mario Lemina, he dropped in an interview on YouTube in January an enigmatic: “We know what has happened in the last six months, internally. I wouldn’t be able to divulge what happened. […] because it’s a total misunderstanding and I still can’t understand why it happened like that. But it was tough.”