OL – OM: Lyon – Marseille is definitively stopped after two hours of discussions

So it took two hours to make a decision that should only have taken a few minutes. Two hours of vagueness, two hours of contradictory decisions, two hours of masquerade, two hours playing with the nerves of the 55,000 spectators. As soon as the bottle filled with water hit Dimitri Payet’s head, after four minutes of play, and he lay down with his arms outstretched on the edge of the lawn at Groupama Stadium, it seemed very unlikely to see the OL-OM shock continue.

However, 1h15 after the end of the match, the announcer announced his resumption, the OL players even started a new warm-up without the Marseillais who, like in Nice, did not want to return to the lawn. “Under these conditions, the League regrets the decision to resume the Olympique Lyonnais – Olympique de Marseille match by the Regional Prefect as was already the case for AS Saint-Étienne – Angers SCO“, declared a few minutes later, and as the OL players continued their warm-up, the LFP in a statement, adding confusion to the confusion.

Ruddy Buquet: “I made the decision”

Therefore, the end of the meeting seemed inevitable: “Contrary to what had been announced, the referee decided not to restart the game, considering that the safety of the players was not guaranteed.“, backpedaled the announcer 45 minutes later (two hours after the assault on Payet) in a stadium dismayed to have waited so long.

So what happened? Ruddy Buquet, the referee of the meeting, came to explain himself at the microphone of Prime Video: “My sporting decision has always been not to resume the matchfor obvious sporting reasons“, he clarified. Indeed, how to imagine Payet returning to the field? Or how to imagine OM playing a shock of this importance without its best player?”I made the decision, insisted the man in black. A player has been physically affected, we have to protect the actors.“Why did it take two hours to formalize his decision?”There were other considerations to take into account“, continued the man in black, maintaining the blur.

At the end of August already, the match between Nice and OM had been stopped after a bottle throw on the same Dimitri Payet. The Nice club had been sanctioned with a withdrawal of two points (including one suspended) and the match replayed on October 27 in Troyes (1-1). “After these new extremely serious facts, the Disciplinary Commission will meet urgently from tomorrow.“, has already announced the Professional Football League after an endless evening.