A match under pressure for Olympique de Marseille, and perhaps even more so for the authorities. OM host Olympique Lyonnais next Wednesday at (9 p.m.), as part of the replay match of the 10th day of Ligue 1, postponed last October 29 after the attack on the Lyon staff bus which led to the injury to the face of Fabio Grosso, and his deputy.
Preparation meetings for this match have already taken place for the police headquarters and the security system put in place is limited, barring an “external” event such as an attack, obviously. A request for a travel ban on supporters was sent to the Ministry of the Interior “because of their behavior on October 29”, namely Nazi salutes and racist insults. In October, 600 Lyon supporters were able to make the trip after several preparation meetings between the police headquarters and the groups of supporters of the two clubs. This time, no problem.
“The prefecture knows that it has no room for error”
Which does not prevent the police headquarters from having “adapted” its security system for Wednesday. “It is neither more important, nor less important, it is adapted taking into account the events and disputes that exist between the two clubs. We thought about what happened, and we adapted the system,” assures the police headquarters. But it is impossible to know more about the precise number of police forces mobilized by the official voice.
The Bouches-du-Rhône police chief, Frédérique Camilleri, is under pressure before this postponement. And for good reason, all the incidents of October 29 took place outside the Vélodrome stadium, therefore under the responsibility of the public authorities. This is also the reason why OM was not sanctioned, and why the match was replayed at the Vélodrome, with the public. “The prefecture knows that it has no room for error in this event, they will take the necessary measures,” a police source confided to 20 Minutes.
According to our information, the numbers have been increased, to the point of being practically doubled with many more CRS companies and mobile gendarmes than during the aborted match. But also with work on the traffic plan, the Lyon coaches having been slowed down by the work around the Vélodrome stadium. A half-admission of failure, even if the police chief had pointed the finger at “morons”, after the attack on the Lyon bus: “If this match did not take place it is not because it there was no joint work between the teams, it is not because the supporters of the two teams chose not to speak to each other, on the contrary, I believe this is a first, but because idiots decided otherwise outside.” No incident will therefore be permitted for the authorities, while no one has been arrested for the attack on the Lyonnais staff bus.