Editorial. Aggression of a PSG player: the excesses of sport

PSG have accustomed football fans to incredible scenarios. If now the women’s section of the Parisian club is also doing it…! The incredible case of aggression of a player, which still has many gray areas, is added to the list of various facts regularly associated with high-level football. Between slippage on social networks, sexual escapades or traffic offenses driving cars, the cup is full. With each new scandal, the argument comes back that football is only a reflection of society, for better or for worse. Partly correct, but a little short. Sports bodies, for example, have their share of responsibility in these abuses, in the face of which they are often content to round back and wait without getting too wet for the storm and justice to pass. Next Saturday, unless unforeseen by then, the Blues will play at the Stade de France with center-forward Karim Benzema, against whom a prosecutor requested ten months in prison, at the end of October, in a sinister blackmail case to the sextape. Noël le Graët, the president of the Federation, has already warned that in the event of a conviction, the player, long excluded from the national team, would remain available for the Blues. In another discipline, handball, the Karabatic brothers, definitively condemned in 2017 in a case of rigged bets, had received a handful of suspension matches. Before they too find their place in the French team. We are entitled to believe that these undisputed champions of French sport have sufficiently paid their fault and deserved to put on the tricolor jersey. But it is also possible to think that sporting interests have prevailed over moral and ethical questions. And to question the message sent to new generations in terms of exemplarity …