When third-placed Marseille host Ligue 1 pacesetters Paris Saint-Germain at the Vélodrome on Sunday night, it should be the football taking centre stage. Hardcore fans from both sides have contrived, however, to ensure that homophobia and thuggery strip the lustre from what will be an intriguing contest.
Marseille, under Roberto De Zerbi, have shown increasing guile and nous over the first eight games to be considered plausible title challengers to a PSG side still reconfiguring its identity without record goal-scorer Kylian Mbappé.
Off-field incidents have dominated the headlines too. Before the 5-0 win at Montpellier on 20 October, Marseille's supporters were involved in clashes with police that left six officers injured.
A day earlier, during the 4-2 victory over Strasbourg at the Parc des Princes, PSG fans targeted Marseille and their recently recruited midfielder Adrien Rabiot for homophobic slurs.
Why? A decades-old rivalry between aspirational clubs and also a fiction of treachery: that after seven years at PSG and then five seasons at Juventus in Italy, Rabiot should want to ply his trade in Marseille.
Oui. Oui. Oui. Such fickleness demands invectives.
Venom
The homophobic chants spewed out from PSG’s Auteuil stand despite repeated calls over the public address system to stop the virulence.
French interior minister Bruno Retailleau condemned the behaviour.
“They should be severely punished,” he said of two alleged ringleaders who have been identified and who are likely to face prosecution.
"It has become unbearable. We can no longer put up with homophobic chanting. I won’t stand for it any longer," Retailleau added.
But oh what a world. What a world. 2024, climatic armageddon a-knocking on the door, myriad atrocities in the Middle East and Saturday night performative bigotry in western Paris.
"PSG reaffirms its firm commitment against all forms of discrimination, including homophobia”, the club said in a statement on Thursday.
"PSG is taking all necessary measures, before and during matches, to ensure that the Parc des Princes remains an inclusive venue for all."
Zero tolerance
The Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP), which oversees France’s top two divisions, added after a meeting of government ministers and football chiefs: "Everyone around the table reaffirmed zero tolerance in the fight against discrimination in stadiums, including homophobic chanting.
"The LFP supports identifying and questioning troublemakers to impose individual sanctions."
At least the authorities appear to be united on taking some form of action.
Only five years ago, the top echelons of the French football federation (FFF) seemed keen to bugle their indifference.
Noël Le Graët, the then president, said the FFF would not instruct referees to stop matches except in cases when a whole stadium was guilty of homophobic chanting.
"I think we're stopping too many matches," he said. "That makes certain government ministers happy, but it bothers me," Le Graët told the regional newspaper Ouest-France.
Stop
"We’ll stop the matches if there’s consistent homophobic abuse from the whole ground, but if 2,000 imbeciles in a crowd of 30,000 are chanting, I don’t see why the other 28,000 should be punished," Le Graët said at the time.
Le Graët has passed into obsolescence, victim of his own antidiluvean attitudes and dismissive comments towards French football legend Zinedine Zidane.
But the latter-day response to the chanting appears uncoordinated.
Newly installed sports minister Gil Avérous says he wants clubs with a history of violence such as PSG, Marseille and Lyon to ensure individual names are on tickets so the holders can be tracked.
He has also urged football authorities to enforce rules that allow for matches to be interrupted or abandoned over homophobic abuse.
“This has been very well understood by the LFP," Avérous said after meeting football bosses.
But Retailleau has taken a more cautious approach. "Stopping matches is very complicated. It’s not the right solution," he said.
His is a preference for using undercover police among the faithful to identify and extract miscreants.
Omission
Two days before the clash between Marseille and PSG, gay and lesbian sports groups accused the government of isolating them from the drive for lasting solutions.
"Bruno Retailleau's emergency meeting left us perplexed," said a joint statement from Inter-LGBT, LGBT+ and Paris FC Arc-en-Ciel.
"The method is incomprehensible, as not a single LGBTQI+ field sports association was invited. So the message seems clear: the fight against LGBTIphobia in sport and soccer stadiums will go ahead without us."
Ministers countered that groups Carton Rouge and SOS Homophobie had been included in the talks at the interior ministry.
But the key test will be how French footballing authorities act after Sunday’s showdown.
The match will be much more than just the ninth fixture of the 2024/25 Ligue 1 season.
Le Classique, as fixtures between Marseille and PSG are styled, could provide French authorities with their moment of truth.
They can prove that the hateful and the homophobes aren't in control.
