With the team eliminated from the Champions League and the continuity of its several star players in the air, PSG has embraced another controversy of a scandalous dimension if it is confirmed. In this case it is the PSG coach, Christophe Galtier, who has been accused by Radio Monte Carlo of an alleged racist and xenophobic attitude towards his players when he was a Nice coach, during the month of August 2021. Specifically, the coach told him he would have told the then sports director Julien Fournier that they “could not” “have so many blacks and Muslims on the team.”
According to the information published by the journalist Romain Molina and ‘After-Foot’, from ‘RMC Sport’, Julien Fournier accused the current PSG coach through an email sent at the end of last season to the company that owns Nice, INEOS, in which he denounced this fact with the following words: “Christophe Galtier then entered my office and greeted his son, who told him ‘you can check with my father what I have told you’ (Galtier’s son is an agent of players and had also spoken to Fournier to comment on the coach’s words): Once his agent/son left, I told Galtier about the conversation he had just had and asked him if it was true. take into account the existing reality in the city, and that indeed we couldn’t have so many blacks and Muslims in the team”.
The then coach of the Costa del Sol team would have told the then football director that “he had to realize that the team did not correspond to the city or what people were asking for”. According to Romain Molina and the ‘After-Foot’ program, the worst of all the email would be at the end. And it is that Fournier talks about a meeting with John Valovic-Galtier, Galtier’s adoptive son, who stated that the situation of his father was “unsustainable” due to the results of the squad. “I asked him what was going on and he explained to me that this team was not like him, that we couldn’t continue like this. I asked him to support me in what he was saying to understand it better and he told me: you have built a team of scum.” And he continued: “I asked him to be more precise and he added: There are only blacks and half of your team is in the mosque on Friday afternoons… I told Mr. John Valovic-Galtier that I was outraged by his comments and I asked him to leave my office immediately.”
After Galtier’s departure, Fournier went so far as to say that his departure had not been amicable. “If I explain the real reasons why we quarreled, because that’s really the word, Christophe Galtier will never enter a dressing room again, neither in France nor in Europe,” Fournier said. Asked about these facts by the “Nice-Matin” media, Fournier did not want to clarify anything. “Currently I am in Brazil far from this controversy with which I am associated to my regretâ€, he reacted. “I am in no way responsible for the dissemination of this information at the time of my departure from the club. I never shot him despite all our differences. The timing of these revelations disgusts me as much as their content, â€he assured.
The coach has not taken long to defend himself and through his foolish “rebuts with the greatest firmness” having made discriminatory comments towards the Nice players. The coach said he learned “with astonishment at the insulting and defamatory statements” denounced by Fournier and announced “legal proceedings.”
Meanwhile, PSG, led by Nasser Al Khelaïfi, has opened an internal investigation to clarify the facts and to find out if Galtier did indeed say those words, which would mean his immediate dismissal. Al Khelaïfi paid 10 million euros to sign Galtier in June last year. The most radical fans of the club, the Collectif Ultras, have called for responsibilities and have demanded the dismissal of the former Nice manager in the event that it is confirmed that he uttered those words. In the last home game, against Lyon on April 2, the Virage Auteuil, which is where the CUP sits, gave the coach a loud whistle.
