The Minister of Sports dreamed of it, the Comex did it. Well almost. Summoned to settle the account of Noël Le Graët, entangled since Sunday in a tornado of trouble since his sacrilegious remarks against the divine bald man, the executive committee of the French Football Federation has decided to meet urgently on Wednesday morning to try to bail out the FFF ship which is taking on water from all sides. This Comex, decision-making body of the FFF composed of twelve members elected on the list of Noël Le Graët in March 2021 (+ two ex officio members, Vincent Labrune and Vincent Nolorgues, respectively president of the LFP and the Amateur Football League) had so far the reputation of never raising an ear to the omnipotence of the big boss.
But the scale of Sunday’s scandal got the better of their torpor. Warmly invited from Monday evening by Amélie Oudéa-Castéra to “take their responsibilities”, the members of the Comex succeeded in convincing Noël Le Graët of the need to meet urgently. In addition to the comments on Zidane, it will also be a question of the extension of Didier Deschamps to the post of coach of the France team, a decision taken unilaterally by NLG and announced directly during the general assembly of the FFF, without even having taken the trouble to inform the members of the Comex that he had nevertheless brought together the day before.
“It would have been good to notify them before the assembly, slips us a former member of the federation. There, they had the impression of being presented with a fait accompli”. This extraordinary Comex will therefore be an opportunity to say things face to face. However, the central issue is elsewhere: if the Ministry of Sports does not have the power to dismiss a Federation president, it has made it clear through the voice of Amélie Oudéa-Castéra that this is what it expected of the thirteen members of the committee, these “personalities who have demonstrated their sense of responsibility” according to the minister.
Le Graët facing the Comex, the big explanation
Can we therefore imagine the resignation of Noël Le Graët brought to his senses by his collaborators at the end of this extraordinary meeting? Everything will depend on him, according to Eric Borghini, current president of the Mediterranean League and member of the executive committee since 2012. “We will take stock when everything is on the table. The president, who has been a great leader of French football for fifty years, will take his responsibilities. He will analyze the situation and he will know, without even being told and holding his hand, what needs to be done,” he told us on Tuesday.
It’s been a while since I lost the instructions for Noël Le Graët, but I can’t imagine it continuing, confides to us a former member of the FFF house. I imagine him having an internal debate with his Comex to find out under what conditions he stops, how and what we put in place behind to ensure that things go as well as possible. I do not see him stubbornly persisting in his position and risking a humiliating dismissal after calling an extraordinary meeting. »
We ask to see, however: most of the 300 great voters, mostly from the amateur world (League and district presidents in particular) who triumphantly re-elected the man last year, seem, according to our first explorations, still acquired to the cause of Le Graët, whose financial and economic results are undeniably positive.
“The situation of the FFF has never been as flourishing as today, assures Borghini The president has decided that 104 million euros, or 38% of the budget of the Federation, would be dedicated to amateur football. This is unheard of and we are the first federation in Europe to do so much for its amateur sector. It would be extraordinary if, with such exceptional results, we convened an extraordinary federal assembly to dismiss the Comex, which is still accountable to the president for all these good results! “.
No decision before the end of the audit?
Everything should therefore be played out in a select committee of the Executive Committee, where the actors still seemed divided on Tuesday, some not necessarily being keen on the idea of complying with the injunctions of Amélie Oudéa-Castéra. “I’m not ready to take lessons from a minister, frankly, one of them slips us off. Let her manage her ministry… If she’s not happy, she takes the delegation away from us and that’s it… She has that power. If the tone is dry, chances are the majority of members are still trying to toe the ministry line. It remains to be seen when.
“I don’t think things will change before the conclusions of the audit launched by the Ministry of Sports are known, specifies a former federal member. It seems difficult to me to analyze the situation on the sole basis of comments made about Zidane. There is a structural approach that has been put in place by the department, rightly so, and it would seem quite serious to me that there are major decisions that have to be made before light is shed on the facts. »
In the event of the resignation of the president of 3F, the members of the Comex would then remain in office and Philippe Diallo would take over until new elections are organised. If all this is pure conjecture for the time being – although it is difficult to see what other outcome this boiling hot issue could take – it is difficult to imagine the extent of the upheaval to come. Will it simply be a question of blowing the cumbersome NLG fuse or will we witness in the coming weeks a real cleaning up within a Fede entangled in a clan war (Le Graët vs Hardouin) and whose dysfunctions have continued to increase over time?
“An atmosphere of 1793 at the federation”
This is the so-called “conservative” scenario that our specialist in federal mysteries fears. “The risk is to have an interim vice-president who decides that everything absolutely must be kept as it is because, in the end, apart from grandpa who was yoyoing at the top of the pyramid, everything was fine at the federation. . And that in the end we only recreate, without the excesses of the president, a system whose functioning has long been deleterious with a confiscation of power by the sole duo Le Graët / Hardouin and a bringing to heel of the Comex ”. For that, again according to this former senior federal official, there is no need for a major reform of the system of governance, the tools of which are there to make the machine run more democratically, but rather for a change in personnel.
But while chief executive Florence Hardouin is currently working behind the scenes to blow up her boss, she is hoping to get through the drops, although also targeted by the ministry’s audit. “There is currently an atmosphere of 1793 at the federation, concludes our source. The guillotine is out but we don’t yet know who it will fall on. I know that Florence Hardouin is on the move, and she does it quite a bit as a rule, but her credit is still very, very worn. Clearly, if she does not have ministerial protection, I do not see how she could not be swept up in the whirlwind”. The dominoes set is in place, all you have to do is give it a little push with your index finger.