Sidney Govou, a former Olympique Lyonnais striker and seven-time French champion with the club, said he does not allow his 17-year-old son to attend OL matches at the stadium because he fears racist abuse targeting him for being mixed-race.
Govou made the comments in an interview published Friday in the regional newspaper Le Progres, in which he also accused what he called micro-groups of fans of maintaining a kind of terror inside the Parc OL, the club's stadium in Decines, near Lyon.
The remarks come in an already tense climate around Lyon's stands. Violent incidents marred the Ligue 1 match between Lyon and Le Havre on August 29, which ended 1-1. Investigations into the clashes between supporters have not so far established a racist dimension to that violence, according to Le Progres.
Keeping his son away from the stands
Govou, 47, now works as a football consultant for the broadcaster Canal+. He said his son has asked him several times to go and watch a match from the stands, and that he has always told him no.
He said it was not normal for him, as a father, to refuse his son this experience out of fear of racist acts against him simply because he is mixed-race. Govou said he had witnessed discriminatory acts himself during his time as a player at Lyon between 2002 and 2008, and that the concern has stayed with him since he became a father.
'Micro-groups' spreading terror
Govou was careful not to blame supporter groups as a whole. He said he was not accusing groups of supporters, but rather micro-groups of people who maintained a kind of terror inside the ground.
He said that atmosphere was not something he felt in every French stadium. Racism, he said, is an offence punished by law, not simply a political opinion, and he argued that it had been tolerated for too long.
He said he was speaking about Lyon because it is the club he knows best, but that he could point to a number of other clubs too. He named Marseille and Paris as the only two clubs where he had not felt that atmosphere, saying there was no unhealthy sense of being watched with a hatred that went beyond football. In Lyon, he said, he found that presence too strong.
Who is Sidney Govou
Govou played for Olympique Lyonnais between 2002 and 2008, winning seven French league titles with the club during a period of Lyon dominance in Ligue 1. He also played for the French national team. He remains a regular presence at matches involving the club where he came through as a youth player, and previously served as a municipal councillor in Saint-Didier-au-Mont-d'Or, a commune in the Rhone department near Lyon.
A problem for the state, not the club
Govou argued that tackling this problem was not the responsibility of the club itself but of the state.
He also criticized what he described as a symbolic drift toward far-right ideas at the Parc OL. He said he was happy when fans sang the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, because he is French and patriotic, but that the anthem does not end with the words "blue white red" accompanied by an outstretched arm, a gesture he said he has sometimes seen in the stands. Patriotism, he said, should not be confused with nationalism.
