This Saturday evening, shortly after half an hour of play, AS Monaco sank outside against a relegation, the Nîmes Olympique (1-3). Indeed, while leading a goal to zero thanks to Wissam Ben Yedder, the Asemists have scuttled. First, Tiémoué Bakayoko was given a red card for a big foul after VAR intervention. And it’s at this moment that Gelson Martins went wild. The former Sporting CP kicked the referee twice and was therefore excluded in turn. Nine against eleven, the Monegasques did not make the weight.
” The mind-blowing images seem to have come from another time. But no, they did take place this Saturday, February 1, 2020: a Ligue 1 player jostled a referee dramatically during Nîmes O. – AS. Monaco! We will have to understand it and integrate it definitively: we do not touch the referee! This golden rule in rugby has to become so in football. Without discussion possible. All the qualifiers are good: the gesture of this player is shameful, intolerable, unbearable, indefensible, inadmissible and does not have to be on a football field “Wrote the Elite Football Referees Union (SAFE) the day after the meeting.
The player also spoke about this, expressing his regrets: ” those who know me know that throughout my career, my principle has always been respect for everyone: colleagues, opponents, supporters and referees, on and off the pitch. I’m not aggressive, I’ve never been aggressive with anyone. Today, after thinking about it, I think I have to apologize for my rash and warm-hearted attitude. I apologize in particular to the referee Mikael Lesage, but also to my colleagues and our supporters “.
No real case law
The disciplinary committee of the Professional Football League (LFP), which sits mid-week, will obviously take up this hot file and it may not be possible to see Gelson Martins again before the end of the season. According to article 10 of the disciplinary scale of the French Football Federation (FFF), which concerns jostling towards an official, the penalty is six months (when there are only sixteen days left until the end of this season ).
In 2010, Alou Diarra, with Bordeaux, had six matches after a similar move, but apologized just after the match. In 2016, Benjamin Jeannot for touching a referee had taken ten suspension matches. In the hardest cases, in 2010, Youssouf Hadji, then in Nancy and who had finished head to head with the man in black, had to pay six months before the Nancy administrative court reduced the penalty to three. Suffice to say that it does not necessarily smell good for the wing of the princely club.
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