Grégory Sertic will long remember his trip to Naples, as a consultant for Canal + for the Champions League round of 16 second leg against Eintracht Frankfurt. The former Bordeaux, Lens and Marseille midfielder found himself in the midst of the violence that punctuated the pre-match on Wednesday evening.
“Unfortunately, I arrived 500 meters from the stadium and I fell into an altercation between German and Neapolitan supporters, he explained on Canal + before the start of the meeting. Surely they must have taken me for a German. I unfortunately took a beating but hey, everything is fine, that’s the main thing. Now what is important is football. On the sporting side, Napoli have largely won (3-0), after having already beaten Frankfurt at home in the first leg (0-2).
A real affair of state
But serious incidents before the match will inevitably have legal consequences. Several hundred Eintracht supporters, without tickets because they had not been authorized to buy them, were present in Naples. They were evacuated from the city center around 6 p.m. by several buses, according to Italian media.
According to Philipp Reschke, a member of the German club’s board of directors, the clashes were provoked by a group of around 150 Neapolitans, who attacked the German supporters while they were being escorted by the police. The mayor of Naples, Gaetano Manfredi, quoted by the Italian agency Ansa, denounced “crazy and unacceptable devastation”. “Tonight’s violence must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Perpetrators of violence and troublemakers are destroying sport,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser tweeted.