Tuesday, coach Fabio Grosso canceled the training planned at Olympique Lyonnais, angered by rumors relayed by former player Jérôme Rothen on RMC: “Grosso, he is already in the hot seat, there is almost no plus a player who can see it. In front of his group, the Italian asked “the mole to denounce himself”, writes L’Équipe. The famous hunt for information leaks is not new in the microcosm of French football.
On December 7, 2004, Paris Saint-Germain punctuated its Champions League campaign with a home defeat against CSKA Moscow (1-3), punished by a hat-trick from Sergei Semak, future Parisian striker. The next day, a “crisis meeting” was held between players, staff and managers, as reported by the newspaper Le Parisien. Details of this meeting are leaking. A player anonymously assures that the group wants the departure of the coach, Vahid Halilhodzic.
Several players “ask to meet” journalists from Le Parisien to explain themselves. Halilhodzic will have a hard time with this episode, two months before being sacked. “That’s what made the team explode,” he judged retrospectively in So Foot in December 2022. I don’t even want to talk about the moles, those rotten ones. There is one who spends his time talking on the radio. Jerome Rothen? Everybody knows it ! The moles, all they want is good marks in the papers!”
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Rothen, ex-French international who played for PSG between 2004 and 2010, responded to him immediately on RMC, without denying the idea that he was the famous mole: “He (Halilhodzic) looked for the mole so much for a few months that it ended up costing him his job… When you read Vahid’s interview, it’s never his fault.”
After a draw against Uruguay (0-0), France lost its second match at the 2010 World Cup against Mexico (0-2). At half-time, Nicolas Anelka attacked coach Raymond Domenech. “Fuck you… you dirty son of a b…”, headlines the newspaper L’Équipe the next day. “What I said that day was: ‘You just have to make your shit team.’” Anelka denied ten years later in a documentary on Netflix. Whatever the words, the attacker was excluded from the group and the affair shook the Blues at the time.
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“The problem with the French team is not Anelka,” said captain Patrice Evra at a press conference from Knysna. The problem is the traitor among us. It must be said. How did this thing get in the press? The question we must ask ourselves is this traitor who must be eliminated from the group.” The famous players’ strike followed. “This mole story makes me laugh. I never found it in the end, Evra smiled to Le Figaro in June 2020. When I see this press conference again where I say that I am going to find the one who threw everything away, that’s where I see that I was too into it. I was inhabited. It shows in my eyes, my phrasing, my irritation…”
Bologna is preparing for a trip to Inter Milan on December 5, 2020. Two days before, the Italian press reveals the tactical innovations planned by coach Sinisa Mihajlovic to trap Inter. The day before the match, the Serb was questioned about this at a press conference. “It was just a feint in the last few hours to see who was talking to journalists,” he replies. If I find the player who is talking, I will stick him to the wall and he will no longer play football. Inter finally won 3-1 at home.
One month after the interruption of the Ligue 1 season following the Covid-19 pandemic, Olympique Lyonnais is taking action regarding salary management. A reduction is envisaged. The players have an exchange with their president, Jean-Michel Aulas, before a meeting between them. Details appear in L’Équipe. The Brazilian full-back, Rafael, doesn’t like it.
“I saw that he brought out things that we talked about yesterday in a meeting where there were only players. I would like to know if it shocks anyone, because it shocks me a lot,” he laments on Twitter. “I know that the guy who did this is not going to come here to say it because he doesn’t have the balls to do that, nor to respect a private meeting,” continues Rafael, a former Manchester United player. Three years later, OL are facing new problems with the media, in a completely different context.
