The duration of his exclusion from the field was greatly reduced on appeal. An amateur footballer, initially suspended for 25 years for attacking a referee after a match in Gironde, saw his sentence reduced to a four-year suspension, two of which were suspended by an appeal committee. A similar sanction was taken against the man with the whistle for having uttered racist insults, according to the New Aquitaine Football League (LFNA).
The facts occurred on October 2 on the sidelines of a division 4 match in the Gironde district. The young player dismissed from the La Réole club, injured and not playing the game, wanted to settle near the field to smoke a shisha with friends. Officials had wanted to prevent them, as well as the volunteer referee of the match. The tone was raised and the player physically attacked the referee after the match.
The insults uttered first
On this basis, he had been suspended for eleven years by the departmental district, a sanction increased to twenty-five years by the LFNA appeal committee, under an “aggravated scale” against violence adopted by local clubs. But it then appeared that the referee had uttered racist insults against the player before he attacked him, “information which we unfortunately did not know at the time of the first decisions”, regional league president and former international referee Said Ennjimi told AFP on Friday. The report on the match, transmitted to the disciplinary authorities, did not mention it.
The appeal committee therefore re-examined the file in a new light at the end of January: “it no longer considered that the referee had been hit as such because the insults were uttered first”, specified the leader. The two defendants also filed a complaint in court, according to the South Gironde weekly The Republican.