The Ministry of the Interior considers that there is “a real and serious risk of confrontation” between the supporters of the two clubs on the occasion of the Coupe de France which will oppose them, Tuesday, January 4th.
Le Monde with AFP
The Bollaert-Deelis stadium should sound a little hollow Tuesday, January 4th. First of all because the Derby Lens-Lille, which is on the program of the seizuns of the Final Football Cup, will be played before a number of spectators reduced to five thousand because of the new measures decided by the government to attempt Fight against the propagation of COVID-19. But the enclosure will be all the less animated as it will also be deprived of the presence of Lille fans.
These have the prohibition to accompany their team, according to a decree of the Ministry of the Interior, published Friday 31 December in the Official Journal. Considering that “the relations between the supporters of the RC Lens and the LOSC remain an animosity imprint for many years”, and that there would be, Tuesday night, “a real and serious risk of confrontation”, the ministry has forbidden “individual or collective displacement, by any means of anyone availing the quality of supporter of the Olympic Sporting Club Lille or behaving like Tel”.
The two clubs already sanctioned
Lens and Lille have been at the heart of the many violence that has enamelled football matches in France since the season’s resumption at the end of August. The meeting between the two Northern Clubs, on September 18 in Lens, as part of the Championship of Ligue 1, had seen dozens of lensois supporters invading the ground to fight with the parking Lille, where seats had been thrown. The eauating, limited by the intervention of the CRS, had made seven wounded, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
The two clubs had been inflicted with the sanctions of the professional football league, including the closure, for the Lille, the parking visitors during the matches disputed outside until 31 December.
An order of the Prefect of Pas-de-Calais, on December 23, had already banned the Lille supporters access to the Bollaert-Deelis stadium, in its surroundings, as well as in several streets of the city center. Lens and the neighboring town of Liévin, from Tuesday 6 hours to Wednesday 6 hours.
In addition, the Ministry reminds that the police remain “strongly mobilized to deal with the terrorist threat” and to manage the migratory situation in Calaisis and the Hauts-de-France coast and that They “can not be distracted from these priority missions to respond to inflows related to violent behavior of supporters as part of sports meetings”.