By David Owen
August 21 – To borrow a phrase that has become a social media cliché: that escalated quickly. Sunday night’s first appearance in a Champions League final by Paris Saint-Germain, the loadsamoney, Qatar-backed giants of Ligue 1, was prefaced by a minor farce that might have been plucked from a Jacques Tati comedy.
The saga began on Thursday when the police prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône department which incorporates Marseille, the Mediterranean port-city that is home to Olympique de Marseille, the Parisians’ fiercest rivals, signed a decree. According to numerous media reports, this would have prohibited the wearing of PSG shirts and colours in the centre of town during the big match on Sunday night.
It is worth pointing out at this point that, while a French team – Reims – appeared in the inaugural European Cup final in 1956, losing 4-3 to Real Madrid, Marseille remain for now the only French club to have lifted the trophy – back in 1993, in a match played in the home-city of Sunday’s opponents, Bayern Munich.
Worthy of mention too is that, with the traditional French holiday season in full flow, lots of Parisians are currently soaking up the sun in the south of the country.
The measure prompted widespread ridicule, mingled with more high-minded concerns about what it might presage for freedom of movement and expression.
“Is it OK to choose what colour socks we wear?” asked one comment posted under the story published by the Le Parisien, a news organisation serving the French capital. “The Parisians have been waiting 50 years for this, and they are being asked not to wear their colours. Is no-one shocked??” inquired another.
The situation was just beginning to arouse wider interest – this website, indeed, was poised to run a report touching on meaty matters such as the interplay between football tribalism and national solidarity – when, ping, a press release was published announcing that the police prefect had done a u-turn.
This press release dwelt on public order issues that had arisen in the Vieux Port during PSG’s semi-final with another German team, RB Leipzig, on Tuesday night, while emphasising that the sole aim of the decree had been to protect PSG supporters.
“Following attacks on two people, one of whom was wearing a PSG shirt, in the context of the semi-final,” the press release said, “[the decree] aimed to ensure that Parisian supporters would not be able to be identified and targeted too easily by the small number of Marseillais who, in total contradiction with the spirit of sport, regard PSG and its supporters with strong animosity”.
Nevertheless, “faced with the incomprehension aroused by the decree, the police prefect has decided today to repeal it”.
That appeared to be that until later on Friday afternoon. This was when Le Monde, parish journal of the French centre-left establishment, published a story suggesting that the u-turn had followed intervention from President Emmanuel Macron himself.
Under the headline, ‘When the Elysée intervenes against a decree prohibiting the wearing of a PSG shirt in Marseille’, Le Monde cited “a source close to the executive” and claimed, “In reality it is the President of the Republic himself who whistled for the end of a polemic that was beginning to grow”.
A Friday morning phone call between Macron and the Minister of the Interior had ended, it seems, with the two men agreeing that the decree was “counter-productive”.
So there you have it: a miniature but perfectly-formed French psychodrama from the old school. One can but hope that the match itself is this entertaining.
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