It’s a bit like the Don Quixote of lost causes when it comes to talking about sport at the Luxembourg Palace. Michel Savin, LR Senator from Isère has promised to table an amendment as soon as possible to change the government’s position on the 5,000-person level in outdoor stadiums (2,000 indoors), the level announced by the Prime Minister for the month January as part of the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. No false hopes, the president of the study group Sporting practices and major sporting events in the Senate has no illusions about the outcome of the fight:
“In general, it is the Minister of Health who answers me and rejects my proposal with arguments that I cannot understand. I thought common sense would eventually prevail, but I see it won’t. We still think that putting 5,000 people in a stadium that can hold 5,000 where people would be on top of each other is the same as in a stadium with 50,000 or 60,000 seats. Let us trust the local officials, whether it be the State or the clubs, who have been thinking for two years about how to welcome the public in the best possible sanitary conditions ”.
The same reasoning despite scientific studies
We would think we were back in the summer of 2020, when the stadium managers of L1 or the top 14 were twisting their brains to convince the government to increase the gauge to 40 or 50% at the start of the school year. “It’s been a while since we tried to work with my colleagues from other clubs to answer a whole bunch of logistical and sanitary questions then confided to 20 Minutes Xavier Pierrot, stadium manager of Olympique Lyonnais. We know, for example, that it will be easier to manage a certain influx for stadiums larger than small enclosures, the same for stadiums with more access doors and diversified means of transport ”.
It was well worth curdling the milk: 18 months later, government thinking has not changed an inch. This famous gauge of 5,000 spectators corresponds in fact to the definition of a public event requiring a prior declaration to the prefecture. In 18 months, however, science has greatly evolved in its understanding of the transmission of the virus, regardless of the variant involved. Thus the theory of original sin, namely the famous epidemiological bomb formed by the meeting between Atalanta Bergamo and Valencia in the round of 16 of the Champions League in February 2020, has since been largely amended by the experts.
The 4m2 gauge immediately forgotten
“At that time, there were no barrier gestures or masks yet, but it was especially during the 3rd half in the bars that people were mainly infected, not necessarily in the stadium, we recently explained the epidemiologist Antoine Flahault. So far, the best exterior are environments that dilute the particles, so not very conducive to the spread of the virus ”. No scientific study has yet identified an increased risk of contamination during outdoor sporting events. Emmanuel Macron himself had implicitly recognized it in November 2020, when he received the actors of the sports world at the Elysee Palace.
The Minister Delegate for Sports Roxana Maracineau was at the time delighted in our columns of the adoption of the principle of a gauge adapted to the percentage of the enclosure rather than an absolute figure: “The resident noted that this return will be done from next year, taking into account a relative gauge, on a perimeter of distance from each other. The track of a spectator every 4 m2 was evoked, that is to say the distance with the wearing of the mask and the respect of barrier gestures ”. A good resolution immediately forgotten, like all the others, because of the arrival of the Delta variant.
It was not until June 2021 and the friendly match between France and Bulgaria to see 5,000 people at the Stade de France. 5,000 people all gathered from the same platform, as during the first meeting of the world after between Le Havre and PSG in July 2020, which did not fail to make observers smile yellow. “I hear the need to take measures in view of the epidemic situation [208.000 cas le 29 décembre selon Olivier Véran], but if it is to put people in the same place, sighs Michel Savin … Especially with the vaccination pass that will be implemented in the coming days and the wearing of the compulsory mask, we could evoke gauges to an acceptable percentage. But I don’t know how much sport weighs in the discussions taking place ”.
The decisions of the @gouvernementFR are intended to protect and stem the double wave. I salute the responsibility and resilience of the sports world, which can be proud of having contributed to the mass vaccination of the French. Let’s hold 3 weeks together.
The state will be by your side– Roxana Maracineanu (@RoxaMaracineanu) December 27, 2021
Supporters lost for the cause?
An anorexic guinea pig at best, even if Jean-Michel Blanquer, Roxana Maracineanu’s caretaker minister, will certainly retort that the state has taken its share, with more than 100 million euros paid as ticket compensation to professional clubs in 2020 and 2021. A financial air cushion that certainly explains the rather passive attitude of the players since the government announcements. Yet the latter, busy counting their losses for January – a small thought for OL who were to receive PSG and ASSE behind closed doors – should know that if the executive does not soften to order gauges with biscorny logic , he is much less quick to judge afterwards.
After two months of respite in the summer of 2020, the state had decided to return to closed doors for the whole of last season without ever bringing the subject up again. Thus, when we hear Luka Karabatic “take comfort in saying that despite everything 2,000 people to attend the preparatory matches for the Euro handball, it is not nothing, even if the communion with the public for our return from the Olympics falls into the water ”, we say to ourselves that the link with the fans – not the morons who put the box on, eh – will end up breaking by dint of being stretched. So, on social networks, many of them wonder why they played the vaccine game if it was to end up deprived of dessert on the living room sofa as soon as a variant appeared, which seems to hang over our noses in the coming years.
A measure undoubtedly prolonged
The worst in there? The French handball players may not be the worst off in the end. It is a matter of days before understanding that the VI Nations tournament, for example, can certainly only take place behind closed doors, and that we are lucky if 5,000 pequins can go to the Parc des Princes to the first leg against Real Madrid in mid-February.
Although it does not play out much. It might have been enough for the President of the Republic to love PSG as much as he loves tennis: during the last Roland-Garros, a saving phone call from the Elysee Palace had allowed the dantesque semi-final between Nadal and Djokovic to go to his term in the presence of the public despite the curfew. OM in the Europa League conference, of course, is less sexy.
