What happened in the stands during a football match?

Accord­ing to injured Mar­seille fan Ali­cia Mahe, dur­ing the first half she, her hus­band and six-year-old son were insult­ed by a group of Nantes fans in a near­by stand. Fans threw glass­es of beer at them, uri­nat­ed and showed their gen­i­tals.

Short­ly after the inci­dent, the vic­tim’s hus­band suf­fered a heart attack. It is report­ed that the man’s heart stopped twice, but he was resus­ci­tat­ed.

“My son was wear­ing a Mar­seille T‑shirt, but he was wav­ing a Nantes flag and singing their anthem. My son is not a fan, he was deprived of an unfor­get­table evening due to some stu­pid­i­ty.

We rejoiced at Mar­seille’s goal, after which we encoun­tered vio­lence from some peo­ple in the neigh­bor­ing stands. They insult­ed us, spat at us, and threw glass­es of beer. Then I found out that they also uri­nat­ed on us. Some showed their penis­es. The stew­ards did not inter­vene in any way — this is a real shame. They said that they were not oblig­ed to do this, since it was not their plat­form.

My hus­band was stand­ing next to the fence. He took the stream of insults seri­ous­ly; they tried to hit him through this fence. He became angry and want­ed to pro­tect his wife and son. He had a heart attack. At first I thought he was hav­ing con­vul­sions. I pan­icked, screamed and called for help. My father helped my hus­band, along with my broth­er, sis­ter and nephew. I was in a pan­ic.

The young fan next to us turned out to be a fire­man. He imme­di­ate­ly saw that he need­ed to do the mas­sage faster. We did every­thing we could while wait­ing for help to arrive. Then my hus­band was tak­en away in an ambu­lance. He suf­fered a car­diac arrest. He is already recov­er­ing and does not remem­ber any­thing about what hap­pened,” said Ali­cia Mahe.

How did the clubs react to the situation?

On Sun­day, Nantes pub­licly con­demned the behav­ior of the group of fans and intends to report the inci­dent to the police. The club is using CCTV footage to iden­ti­fy those respon­si­ble.

The inci­dent was also com­ment­ed on by the French Min­is­ter of Sports Amelie Oudea-Cast­era. In her state­ment, she called the behav­ior of Nantes fans “dis­grace­ful” and expressed sup­port for the affect­ed fam­i­ly.

“Noth­ing can jus­ti­fy the aggres­sion that chil­dren, their par­ents and any­one else suf­fer from in the sta­di­um. I wel­come the response of the French Pro­fes­sion­al Foot­ball League (LFP), which referred the mat­ter to a dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee, as well as the response of the club in announc­ing the com­plaint. I wish the father a recov­ery so that he can return to his fam­i­ly as soon as pos­si­ble,” Udea-Cast­era said.