34 N THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSSUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2020 K
Jean-Michel Aulas has been
watching a lot of soccer in recent
weeks. His emotions have been
mixed.
On the one hand, Aulas, the
president of the French club
Olympique Lyonnais, loves the
sport. And even though games
across Europe are being played
against the surreal and sterile
backdrop of fan-free stadiums, he
says he cannot get enough of it.
On the other hand, with each
passing game, with each passing
week that soccer’s return from its
monthslong pandemic pause pas-
ses without incident, Aulas’s fury
has mounted.
For weeks since March, Aulas,
71, had been the loudest voice —
and at times the only voice —
pressing for the French league to
stay the course, to not be so hasty
in declaring its season over while
other leagues across Europe were
still plotting ways to resume their
schedules.
Aulas did not get his way. As
early as April 30, officials from
France’s top league voted to rub-
ber-stamp an announcement that
the country’s prime minister,
Édouard Philippe, had made in
parliament days earlier that effec-
tively ended the season. Aulas
then failed to successfully appeal
the decision in court.
“It’s a massive frustration for us
because football started every-
where,” Aulas said in a telephone
interview last week.
Aulas is well known in France
for speaking his mind — he used
to use Twitter to try to lure top
women’s players to sign with Lyon
— and ever since losing the fight
over the season he has lashed out
at everyone from government of-
ficials to league administrators to
rival executives. He has issued
withering put-downs and he has
lectured them about what he
views as a huge blunder, one with
ramifications that he contends
will be long lasting, and deeply
damaging, to French soccer. The
word “stupid” was invoked.
Aulas’s critics accuse him of be-
ing a blowhard, a man whose fury
is borne entirely out of self inter-
est. His team, a regular Champi-
ons League competitor, one that
had played in Europe for 23 con-
secutive years, will be perhaps the
hardest hit by Ligue 1’s decision to
end the season. When the season
stopped, Lyon was in seventh
place, outside of the European
places for next season.
“You have to understand he is
really hurt, really injured, and he
worries about the financial situa-
tion, but he is trying to change re-
ality,” said Bernard Caiazzo, the
president of another club, St.-Éti-
enne, and the head of a group that
represents Ligue 1 clubs.
Aulas’s fiery remarks have cre-
ated damaging fissures with other
leading figures in French soccer,
including Caiazzo and Didier Quil-
lot, the chief executive of Ligue 1,
which is known as L.F.P.
Quillot declined to discuss
Aulas. “L.F.P. management has
decided to work instead of speak-
ing,” he said in an email provided
by a league spokesman.
Caiazzo, who sits on the board
of the Ligue 1, suggested Aulas
was trying to rewrite history.
The comments by Philippe, the
prime minister, in parliament on
April 28, in which he declared the
season over, had set off a chain re-
action, Caiazzo said. Within hours,
the president of France’s soccer
federation declared amateur and
professional soccer over, and the
top division’s main television part-
ner announced it would cancel the
remainder of its contract. Then
came the league’s board meeting.
“At this time there were 1,000
deaths per day,” Caiazzo said. “Do
you think somebody will put their
hand up and say, ‘Sorry, I don’t
think we will stop.’ We would have
been outlaws.”
The league, in Aulas’s view,
panicked. He said he was actually
defending France’s interests
when he argued against ending
the season; the league, he said,
now risks punishment by Euro-pean soccer’s governing body for
not trying to finish its campaign.
And events in the weeks and
months that have followed do ap-
pear to support at least some of
Aulas’s claims. France’s sports
minister, Roxana Maracineanu,
surprised many recently when
she suggested it was ultimately
the league’s call to end the season.
The easing of restrictions in
France, where shops and restau-
rants have gradually started to re-
open, along with the resumption
of play in Europe’s other top
leagues, have made French soc-
cer’s decision the exception rather
than the rule.
“I publicly said that this is a
mistake, and a big misunder-
standing of the real situation, so I
was alone to express myself, yes,”
Aulas said. “Often in France peo-
ple who speak out are right, but
are often only seen to be right af-
ter it is too late.”
French clubs continue to add up
the costs of the season’s early end.
The government has backed a
loan of 225 million euros ( just over
$250 million) to replace the
amount television companies
would have paid for the remainder
of the season, but talks continue
over how it might help teams
cover losses like lost ticket and
sponsorship revenues. Estimates
of those costs vary; French soc-
cer’s financial body estimated
next season’s deficit might be as
high as 1.1 billion euros, or $1.2 bil-
lion, before accounting for player
trading income.Set against that bleak back-
drop, clubs in France are certain
to see their values tumble, and for
bargain hunters hoping to take ad-
vantage of the grim financial situ-
ation to start to circle. Aulas ex-
pects prices, both for clubs and for
the players that are their most
valuable assets, to plummet.
“I think the way things have
been managed has really de-
stroyed French football,” he said.
Under Aulas, president of the
team for more than three decades,
Lyon emerged from a relatively
modest past to become the main
force in French soccer during the
first decade of the century, win-
ning all seven of its league titles
and serving as France’s flag-carri-
er in the Champions League. It
has since been surpassed by Paris
St.-Germain, the perennial league
winner backed by Qatar.
Aulas said P.S.G.’s president,
Nasser al-Khelaifi, had provided
quiet support to his ultimately
doomed attempts to keep the sea-
son going. The teams will meet in
the delayed French League Cup fi-
nal next month, and both remain
in the Champions League, which
will conclude in August in Portu-
gal. Should Lyon get past Juven-
tus, which it leads by 1-0 after the
first game of their two-legged,
round-of-16 playoff, it will join
P.S.G. in Lisbon.
By the time those games hap-
pen, most players on French
teams will not have played com-
petitive soccer since early March.
(P.S.G. will also contest the
French Cup final, France’s top
knockout event, against St.-Éti-
enne, in July.)
In Aulas’s mind, as the virus
raged in April, France’s govern-
ment alighted on the soccer indus-
try to make a point, to demon-
strate it was acting decisively to
tackle a virus that had been dev-
astating the country. In short, he
said, the decision to end the sea-
son was a piece of theater.
“They have used football as a
political tool in the middle of this
public health crisis of coronavirus,
and I have to admit this is a shame
for football people,” he said.
For now, Aulas can do little ex-
cept continue to watch soccer on
television, and continue to fume.President of French Club
Still Fumes Over Decision
To End the Season Early
By TARIQ PANJA“I think the way things have been managed has really destroyed
French football,” said Jean-Michel Aulas, Lyon’s president.JEFF PACHOUD/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES‘He is trying to
change reality,’ a
rival executive says.
RICK BOWMER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Top-level team sports returned to the United States on Saturday as the National Women’s Soccer League began
play in Herriman, Utah. Before the North Carolina Courage defeated the Portland Thorns, 2-1, players took a
knee during the national anthem to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.TEAMWORK IS BACK ON THE FIELD
A couple of Burnley players
looked up at the sky. The drone
of a single-engine plane circling
low over the Etihad Stadium in
Manchester had caught their
attention, snapping
their focus from
the game against
City in front of
them. They
squinted, trying to
decipher the mes-
sage trailing on the banner be-
hind it. When they did so, they
sighed, sadly, and shook their
heads.
Micah Richards was standing
by the side of the field when he
saw it. Richards, the former
Manchester City defender, was
on duty for television that night.
He, too, had spotted the banner,
but had only glanced at its word-
ing. Only when a steward, a
despairing look on his face,
asked him to look again did he
realize it did not, after all, say
Black Lives Matter, as Richards
had thought. White Lives Matter,
the message read. White Lives
Matter Burnley.
In the immediate aftermath of
the incident, the reaction was
swift, and admirable. Burnley
published a statement condemn-
ing the banner before halftime.
After the game, the club’s cap-
tain, Ben Mee, informed inter-
viewers he would discuss the
result only after he had made it
plain just how “embarrassed” he
was, just how fiercely the club
rejected the message the banner
contained.
Sean Dyche, the team’s man-
ager, was just as forthright. The
views of the people who orga-
nized the flight did not match his
values, he said, or the values of
his club. Burnley vowed to work
with all the relevant authorities
to issue lifetime bans to anyone
and everyone found to be in-
volved.
A week or so earlier, as Britain
emerged from lockdown into
balmy June sunshine, London’s
streets had roiled. After days and
days of Black Lives Matter pro-
tests around the country, around
the globe, after the statue of the
slave trader Edward Colston was
dragged into the sea in Bristol,
after a statue of Queen Victoria
in Leeds was daubed with graf-
fiti, a “counterprotest” was
planned.
The quotation marks are rele-
vant: In theory, people were
marching to protect Britain’s
beloved statues from those who
had done them harm in the name
of protesting against police bru-
tality. In reality, they seemed to
spend quite a lot of the time
fighting, occasionally with each
other, but mostly with the police.
The message of their counter-
protest was a little vague.
The nature of it, though, was
not. The iconography, the song-
book, the pattern of the “protest”
that day was familiar: It be-
longed to, and was borrowed
from, soccer. As they marched
through the streets, they
chanted, “England,” as they
would have done had the na-
tional team been playing.
They called Winston Churchill
“one of their own,” as if the coun-
try’s wartime leader was basical-
ly a colonialist Harry Kane. We
had seen these scenes before, but
usually on foreign streets, usu-
ally directed at foreign police
forces. This was England abroad,
but this time it was at home.
That familiarity made it easy,
in the days that followed, to
dismiss the violence and the
disorder as the work of “football
yobs.” That, after all, is precisely
what they were, at least some of
them: There were connections
between some of the self-styled
counterprotesters and the Foot-
ball Lads Alliance, a sort of loose
conglomeration of fan groups
whose members spend their
middle age cosplaying as hooli-
gans.
There is a comfort in that, for
the rest of the country. They
allowed them to believe these
people were soccer’s problem; if
only soccer did not exist, or if
only it got its house in order, then
they would all just go away.
Such a reading, though, is
unhelpful. Yes, a lot of the people
there would consider themselves
soccer fans. But from the look of
it, a lot of them like potato chips,
too, and sunburn and Nazism
(they may not have understood
that particular part of Churchill’s
role in history).
Whether they like soccer or
not is not especially relevant.
They are a problem that belongs
to Britain that — whether the
rest of us in the country like it or
not — represents a section of the
population. Blaming soccer for
their existence is to shirk respon-
sibility.
But just as unhelpful is the
other trope that emerged after
the White Lives Matter plane
flew over the Etihad. There is a
tendency to suggest that people
with such abhorrent views are
not real soccer fans, that they are
merely using soccer for their
own ends, to sow their hatred
and division. That, too, is passing
the buck. It is soccer saying they
are someone else’s problem.
The reality is that the far right
has always seen soccer as not
just fertile ground, but as its own
territory. In the 1970s and ’80s,
the far-right activists of the
National Front hunted for new
recruits on England’s terraces.
The nationalism engendered by
the national team meant black
players were confronted by
racists on official trips, as hap-
pened to John Barnes on a flight
with England in South America
in 1984.
Nor is it just an English prob-
lem. Ultra groups across Europe
— with only occasional excep-
tions — skew to the right, even if
the roots of the movement lie inthe revolutionary leftism of the
1960s.
In England, the bond is not
quite that explicit now, though
the lyrics regularly heard during
England’s fleeting visits to tour-
naments — as well as a slew of
racist incidents in recent years —
make it clear this is not a battle
that has been won. Whether
soccer wants them or not,
whether soccer takes responsi-
bility for them or not, much of
the far right still regards the
game as its natural home.
It is not enough for soccer’s
authorities to divest themselves
of responsibility for these inci-
dents. It is not enough for fans to
make clear that these people do
not speak for them. There must,
as the Black Lives Matter move-
ment has made clear, be active
opposition. It is not enough not to
stand with; we must stand
against.
That means not finding a fris-
son of excitement in the outlaw
identity of ultras proudly bathing
in the iconography of fascism. It
means not fetishizing the days of
hooliganism and casuals and
firms, glibly writing their politics
out of their violence. It means
understanding that they do not
believe they speak for the club,
but that they speak for the fans.
It means passing down through
time stories of the damage they
did, not the example they set.
The strange thing about the
plane at the Etihad is that the
stadium, that night, was empty.
There were no fans to see it. The
message got out only because
the news media noticed it, re-
ported it, spread it around.
The organizers of the stunt
knew that would happen. They
knew it would reach the people
they wanted it to reach, some-
how, because soccer is their
game, the game that has always
made them feel welcome, treated
them as renegades and trouble-
makers, rather than racists and
fascists. Enough, now. It is time
to make it clear that it is not their
game, and it never was.A Sustainable ModelThese are red-letter days for
Liverpool. On Wednesday night,
Jürgen Klopp’s team dismantled
Crystal Palace — producing a
display of quite remarkable
frenzy and firepower made all
the more striking by its sterilebackdrop — to move to within
two points of a first Premier
League title in 30 years. On
Thursday, Chelsea beat Man-
chester City to deliver it.
That title was the crowning
achievement of three extraordi-
nary years: a Champions League
final in 2018, a Champions
League victory in 2019, an im-
pressive challenge to Manches-
ter City in the Premier League
last year and a comprehensive
rout of all rivals this season.
Liverpool has been transformed
over the last decade into an
admirably modern club; these
are the prizes on offer at the
cutting edge.
The club’s women’s team, on
the other hand, has just been
relegated after years of neglect.
Generally, contrasts between
men’s and women’s soccer are
unhelpful, but in this case it is, I
think, relevant. To many, Liver-
pool has been “playing at” hav-
ing a women’s team. It has in-
vested substantially — 30 million
pounds, or about $37 million, last
year in payments to agents; not
players, agents — in men’s soc-
cer and left its women’s team,
effectively, to sink or swim.
That charge is basically cor-
rect, but Liverpool’s explanation
is worth examining. Liverpool,
essentially, wants its women’s
team to be sustainable. It does
not want it to be reliant on regu-
lar cash infusions from the men’s
game.
Personally, that strikes me as
myopic. Twenty years ago, Eng-
lish men’s teams happily paid
over the market rate for foreign
stars because they recognized
they would make the league
more glamorous in the long term.
Women’s soccer, in Europe, is at
that stage now. Owners are spec-
ulating to accumulate.
But long term, it is worth
asking if Liverpool has a point. It
is not healthy for the women’s
game to be financed by the
men’s, to be reliant on the men’s
for its income, to be vulnerable to
the shifting priorities of men’s
clubs, as happened at Liverpool.
The future for women’s soccer is
not in being an offshoot of men’s
soccer. It does have to be self-
sustaining. It is in the interests of
everyone to work out how that
can happen.Why Do the Haters Love Soccer So Much?
RORY
SMITH
ON
SOCCERSean Dyche, the Burnley manager, and his staff kneeling at a game at Manchester City last week.MICHAEL REGAN/GETTY IMAGESChief soccer correspondent Rory
Smith takes you from the biggest
matches to the smallest leagues,
covering the tactics, history and
personalities of the world’s most
popular sport. Sign up to receive
his newsletter at nytimes.com/
rory.