The Olympique de Lyon-Olympique de Marseille, corresponding to matchday 14 of Ligue 1, has been suspended tonight after a bottle hit by Payet by an ultra from the local team. Only four minutes passed when the French international received a bottle hit in the face that forced the medical assistants to intervene for five minutes. The LFP decided to resume the game at 10 pm, but Marseille, as it did in August in Nice, refused to go out on the pitch, so the game was suspended for good.
French football was once again the protagonist this Sunday because of the ultras. What seemed like isolated events at the beginning of the season have become a constant in a country that has been more of a protagonist in 2021 for extra-sporting acts than for what happens on the pitch. Marseille star Payet was hit in the face by a bottle in the fourth minute just as he was about to take a corner, forcing the referee to suspend the match for more than an hour.
Both teams waited for an hour and a quarter in the dressing room tunnel for the LFP’s decision. The individual who threw the bottle of water on Payet was questioned by the police and taken directly to the police station, where he is currently making a statement and will spend the night under the police station.
At 10:00 pm, the Parc OL loudspeaker announced that the match was going to resume. Meanwhile, both the prefecture of Lyon, in charge of the security of today’s match, and the LFP, released two statements blaming each other for the decision to replay the game.or. For 20 minutes, Lyon’s players warmed up on the pitch, while Marseille refused to play from the start despite the referee’s firm verdict to resume the contest.
At 22:43 the Olympique de Lyon-Olympique de Marseille was officially suspended. The fans of the Rhône team had begun to leave the stadium due to the evidence that the match was not going to be resumed, so the stadium’s loudspeaker announced the verdict, this time final, of the LFP. In the coming weeks, the highest level of French football will meet to make a decision regarding what happened tonight at Parc OL.