Football: Accused of "moral harassment" and "discrimination", Galtier tried on December 15

“Moral harassment and discrimination on the grounds of belonging or not belonging, real or supposed, to an ethnic group, a nation, an alleged race or a determined religion”. These are the charges against Christophe Galtier, and those which he will have to answer on December 15 before the criminal court. So decided Xavier Bonhomme, the public prosecutor of Nice, this Friday at the end of the custody of the future ex-coach of PSG. Facts punishable by three years' imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros.

Nice coach during the 2021-22 season, before taking the reins of Paris Saint-Germain last summer, Galtier, 56, was taken into custody and heard by investigators this Friday, like his son , John Valovic… “At the end of their hearings, they disputed the infringements which were likely to be reproached to them”, as one learns it in a press release.

Former director of football at OGC Nice, Julien Fournier had thrown a stone into the pond by explaining that Galtier "will no longer enter a locker room, neither in France nor in Europe" if he reveals the "real reasons" for their scrambles. Enigmatic remarks made in September 2022 on RMC, when the two men – whose relations were notoriously bad – had already left the Riviera club. Fournier did not give any further details and we left it at that.

A few days after an already stormy match between the OGCN and PSG de Galtier, last spring, the independent journalist Romain Molina published a video on his YouTube channel in which he revealed the content of an email sent by the said Fournier to Dave Brailsford, football director of Ineos, the owner of the Riviera club. He openly accused the current Paris-SG coach of very clearly racist remarks. The native of Marseille had at the time been placed under protection by the club of the capital, which must also dismiss him and put the Spaniard Luis Enrique in his place on the bench for next season. A change that has nothing to do with the current affair, but with the level of play of the Rouge et Bleu over the past season, and the sad elimination in the knockout stages of C1. "As of April 13, 2023, these elements motivated the opening of a preliminary investigation by the Nice prosecutor's office, entrusted to the Nice judicial police service", we recall. Since then, the authorities have conducted “searches on April 14, 2023 and hearings of players, staff members and leaders of the OGCN”.

Spent on the benches of Saint-Etienne (2009-17), Lille (2017-21), Nice (2021-22) and Paris (2022-23), after a very honorable career as a player in Ligue 1 and elsewhere (Italy, China), Galtier can be proud of having won two titles of champion of France (Lille 2021, PSG 2023). According to our information, the current case and his Friday spent in police custody should have only a limited impact, if at all, on the end of his adventure at Paris Saint-Germain, which has Elsewhere made no comment on the course of the day.