football thread No11

Well, um…

Of course French police and politicians lied and smeared UK football fans. That’s what they do

In France, the violence meted out at the Champions League final and the cover-up that followed were tragically familiar

Spoiler :
There is a proverb in French: “A quelque chose malheur est bon.” It roughly equates to “Every cloud has a silver lining.” In that sense – and I mean no offence, above all, not to Liverpool supporters – I think something positive emerged from the fiasco of the Champions League final in Paris on 28 May, when the club’s fans were unfairly blamed for chaotic and terrifying scenes outside the Stade de France.

It is that the world finally knows that there exists a country where people who cause no trouble – including children who had simply come to watch their idols play football – can be teargassed and abused by police for no justifiable reason. A country where those exercising the highest political office are able to peddle absolute nonsense in an attempt to extricate themselves from the controversy, without fear of consequence. That country is mine, France.

At last, amid continuing outrage, with British and Spanish officials and politicians, and thousands of fans and families, still calling for apologies and explanations, the world can perhaps understand what we French journalists have been trying to document for several years, most notably since Emmanuel Macron arrived in office in 2017. Here are but a few examples.

On 1 December 2018 in Marseille, 80-year-old Zineb Redouane was struck in the head by a teargas grenade when she went to shutter a window in her fourth-floor flat because of a demonstration taking place in the street below. Video images pointed to the firing of that grenade by a police officer. She died the next day in hospital. The police never identified the officer who fired the grenade, and the government did nothing.

On 23 March 2019, in Nice, 73-year-old Geneviève Legay, a feminist and anti-capitalist activist, was peacefully taking part in a demonstration against Macron and his government. When a police charge caused her to fall, she suffered serious head injuries, including bleeding on the brain. “This woman had had no contact with the forces of law and order,” declared Macron two days later. With contempt, he added: “I wish her a swift recovery and, perhaps, a sort of wisdom.” He had lied – a judicial investigation established she was indeed a victim of the police action. For having revealed details of the case, a journalist with the investigative team I co-lead at Mediapart was summoned for questioning by police. Again, the government did nothing.

On 21 June 2019 in Nantes, Steve Maia Caniço, 24, joined a dance party on a quay beside the River Loire during France’s yearly music festivities, the Fête de la musique. During the night, the police violently attempted to disperse the partygoers, causing 14 of them to fall into the river. The body of Maia Caniço was discovered in the water one month later and the initial police report concluded his death was unrelated to the police charge. A judicial investigation has since found to the contrary. The government, again, did nothing.

I could also mention how police forced a group of school pupils protesting about education reforms to kneel on the ground with hands behind their heads like prisoners of war, or incidents of police hitting firefighters during a demonstration over working conditions, and dragging protesting nurses along the ground. Not forgetting the 30 people who lost an eye, and six others who lost a hand, during the “yellow vest” protests – and all those times when the government did and said nothing.

But when it does say something, this is what it sounds like. In March 2019, Macron, apparently inspired by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, said: “Don’t talk about police repression and violence, such words are unacceptable in a state of law.”

In February 2020, Macron’s then interior minister, Christophe Castaner, infamous for having once falsely claimed that May Day demonstrators “attacked” a Paris hospital, declared: “I like order in this country and I defend the police … And in my words there are no ‘buts’. I defend them, and that’s all.”

And what can be said of the comment by Castaner’s successor, Gérald Darmanin, who blamed the Champions League disturbances on “industrial-scale” ticket fraud and said more than 30-40,000 Liverpool fans had fake tickets or no tickets outside the stadium.

Speaking before parliament in July 2020, Darmanin pronounced: “When I hear talk of police violence, I choke.” The remark was particularly cynical, made just two months after the death of George Floyd in the US after his neck was compressed by a police officer, and six months after the death in Paris of deliveryman Cédric Chouviat who, in a roadside police check that got out of hand, cried out “I’m suffocating” seven times to officers lying on top of him.

The message I want to send here is that behind the loud controversy that continues to surround the Champions League final, the violence and the near disaster, lies the silence of a familiar, practised French strategy. It ensures wrongdoing is never punished, and police offenders are never brought to book.

Fabrice Arfi is a French journalist with co-responsiblity for investigations at the website Mediapart

tl;dr: nope.
 
England playing Italy behind closed doors in Wolverhampton tonight as a punishment for the crowd trouble at the Euro finals last year.
It's a bit odd.
 
Losing to 0-4 Hungary should have the same effect. Even if not for nothing else than to protect Maguire.
 
It's official, eight of Maradona's staff have been charged with his homicide.
 
I'm not sure that I know enough about Michael Jackson to really answer.

But, in general, they seem to have been a team of medical staff, a shady lawyer who had Maradona sign away the rights to his name and image, and more people who were around hanging on for the money, feeding his vices and isolating him from his friends. As bad as my opinion of Maradona is, what he deserved was help, not a bunch of bloodsucking ticks.
 
That sounds exactly like MJ's last few decades I believe.

But more seriously on a medical front. Becoming yes men and essentially drug dealers rather than acting as health professionals. If you have 24/7 medical attention and care.. You shouldn't die the way they did.
 
All that I said in my previous post might seem exaggerated but that's how everything in Maradona's life has been for the past 40 years.

He really did cheat big in football in the '80s and '90s.
He really did have wild sex-and-drug orgies in the '90s.
He really did shoot at nosey journalists.
He really did help normalise rape and physical violence against women with a continual avalanche of rape jokes and euphemisms, as well as backing it up with actual behaviour.
He really did sell out for whichever dictator in the world wanted to buy him, starting with the Napolitan camorra and working his way up to oil sheikhs, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Lukashenko and their like (for seven-zero contracts, mind you).
He really did actually waste his talent and win a surprisingly small number of titles for one of the most gifted footballers ever to have played the game.

And the real problem was that he lived in a society that celebrated all his excesses and cheered him on and encouraged him and sanctified any brain-addled statement of his (not an exaggeration, as the post-mortem examination of his remains showed advanced internal damage) even after his death doesn't acknowledge its participation in it.
 
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So, you're not a founding member of any of his fanclubs? I don't have anything against sex orgies but other than that that sums up my views on him as well. One of the earliest times I saw him play was against Brazil in '82 WC - the christmas card was optional extra but paved the path of not getting to Pele's 3 titles any time soon as some expected/hoped.
 
That makes quite a difference I agree.
 
Last week in Turku Finland played against Japan as a preparation game for the Women's Euro21 starting next week. Obviously the second half was disastrous and we lost 1-5 but the interesting part were the cooling breaks on both halves - unthinkable few years ago. That's what happens far away in the south; we're supposed to more likely have polar bear protection units than cooling breaks.
Last qualification game against Portugal in January '21 was in trouble because of cold. Previous days were -15 - -20C but the game day only had cozy -8C or something like that.
Something weird is going on.
 
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Last week in Turku Finland played against Japan as a preparation game for the Women's Euro21 starting next week. Obviously the second half was disastrous and we lost 1-5 but the interesting part were the cooling breaks on both halves - unthinkable few years ago. That's what happens far away in the south; we're supposed to more likely have polar bear protection units than cooling breaks.
Last qualification game against Portugal in January '21 was in trouble because of cold. Previous days were -15 - -20C but the game day only had cozy -8C or something like that.
Something weird is going on.
I thought the bears could protect themselves against footballers quite well.

I still remember that time when Finland nearly beat Germany away for the WC qualifiers –after Finland was already out of the competition, of course.
 
It'd be reckless to leave the sweet & fluffy unsuspecting polar bears at the mercy of some locals. While one is explaining the off-side rules and another variable handball interpretations to confused bears it'd be easy to take demeaning pictures of them. Clear animal cruelty while it's also unclear if we could trust the bears to pay with Euros to get in as they're likely to share currency with Snerk than us.
I foresee problems on both sides.

As usually with regards to our successes (lol) in football the emphasis is on 'nearly'.

Proud Olympic 4th.
 
What about offside rules? Polar bears may have unusually thick eyebrows. Is the head underneath the eyebrow in offside, or only the eyebrow itself? Which part of the eyebrow? Hair follicles, or the outer part? So tricky.
 
No wonder the dude is pissed. The bear prolly messed up the forest floor & now he has to rake it again to prevent forest fires. To be on the safe side he may brush it as well.

Even more on topic - today we'll get hammered by the Netherlands.
 
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