The shame of PSG

I have been to Paris a few times and I really like France’s capital city. It is a vibrant and exciting place. Because of that, and the fact that as I was growing up and developing an interest in European football, their football team, Paris Saint-Germain, seemed to be one of the best and the most glamorous.

Success

Winning Ligue 1 in 1986 and 1994 and then success in Europe in 1996 when they won the Cup Winners Cup, the club were going from strength to strength. Since 1996, despite a few cup wins, PSG have faded away somewhat as a major power.

This season they have undergone something of a resurgence and sit in level second place in Ligue 1 just one point behind Lyon. It was this resurgence that I felt excited about and decided to dedicate this editorial to PSG.

Disturbing

It was as I was researching the article that I came across a few disturbing facts about the club’s supporters. What I read left me feeling less pleased with their success and seriously dented the position they held of being my favourite non-English team.

I had never heard about the problems amongst the PSG supporters before and I would welcome any knowledge anyone else may have about this unsavoury element to the club.

Far-right

Apparently, PSG draw many fans from far-right white nationalist groups who congregate at the Boulogne End of the Parc des Princes and are known as the ‘Boulogne Boys’.

PSG also have strong support from a cross-section of Paris’ multi-ethnic population. The problems that a mixture of those two groups of society could cause are pretty clear to imagine.

It is apparently well known that PSG’s ‘Boulogne Boys’ have been fighting with all sorts of other PSG fans for many years. They are not all far right wing activists but many are believed to be. The increase in football violence around France has been largely blamed on this small group of thugs.

Wrecked

In 2005 Auxerre police were faced with the unusual problem of PSG fans fighting in the away fans enclosure, with each other. In 2006, a motorway service station was wrecked as two groups of PSG fans attacked each other with weapons including baseball bats.

Toulouse, Lens and Paris police have all see similar incidents to that in Auxerre as the reputation of the PSG fans continued to nose-dive.

When asked about the problems by the BBC, PSG Chairman Pierre Blayau said,

“while the club is doing all it can, it is reaching the limit of its powers, we could do still more in the way of education, we could launch still more anti-discrimination campaigns, to explain why football should remain entertainment, driven by values of mutual respect But there comes a point where the individuals who behave badly and cross the line – and I mean individuals, they’re not supporters – become delinquents, both in our eyes and those of the authorities. In that case, the club doesn’t have the powers of the police or the judiciary”.

The French Government have become involved this year as the Interior Minister has said that the ‘Boulogne Boys’ must disband or face being sent to jail. This followed a game at the Stade de France when the ‘Boulogne Boys’ displayed offensive banners stating that fans of Lens were ‘paedophiles’ and ‘inbred‘.

I have absolutely no idea if these stories and accusations are all true or based on truth, but if they are, this sounds like a particularly nasty and unpleasant problem for PSG, French football and France in general.

Cancer

In England we have, to a large extent, eliminated the cancer of football violence, certainly from within the stadiums. I was shocked to read about the problems of PSG, just as I was by the loathsome racist chanting in Spain and Croatia over the past couple of years.

Even at the height of football violence in England, when our teams were rightly banned from all European competition, I don’t think teams supporters had riots amongst themselves!

If this is all true, in this day and age, how are PSG allowed to continue playing in Ligue 1, let alone European competition?