AS Monaco FC midfielder Mohamed Camara has been suspended for four matches after covering up an LGBT support badge on his game jersey during a Ligue 1 match (Mail, New York Times, Telegraph).
The 24-year-old Mali international did not speak out against the campaign, or overtly condemn any particular group, but placed white tape over the campaign logo on his chest during the club’s 4-0 win over Nantes on 19th May.
In a statement, French football’s governing body, the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) said it took the decision to impose the ban “after hearing from Camara, and noting his refusal during the meeting to carry out one or more actions to raise awareness of the fight against homophobia”.
The LFP’s rainbow shirt scheme has been in place for the past three years, and involves clubs in France’s top two divisions customising their shirts for one matchday every season, to coincide with ‘International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia’.
Last week, French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera said that Camara should be subject to “the strongest sanctions”.
“It is unacceptable behaviour,” Oudea-Castera told French radio station RTL on Monday. “I had the chance to tell the [LFP] what I thought about it last night and I think such behaviour must be subject to the strongest sanctions against the player and the club which allowed it to happen.”
Monaco chief executive Thiago Scuro also told French media the club supports the LFP’s campaign, and added they will have a “conversation” with Camara “internally” to “discuss this situation”.
Meanwhile the Malian Football Federation issued a statement in support of Camara, saying “players are citizens like any others, whose fundamental rights must be protected in all circumstances”.
This isn’t the first time the LFP-backed scheme has met with resistance.
Last year, several Toulouse players were left out of the club’s match-day squad for a game against Nantes having indicated their reluctance to wear a rainbow flag-themed shirt.
Moroccan international midfielder Zakaria Aboukhlal was the only one of the three players to comment publicly on the move. “Respect is a value that I hold in great esteem. It extends to others, but it also encompasses respect for my own personal beliefs,” he said in a statement on social media. “Hence, I don’t believe I am the most suitable person to participate in this campaign.”
Toulouse later confirmed that the players had been sidelined over their “disagreement” with the campaign, but that the club were “respectful” of their individual choices.
Nantes striker Mostafa Mohamed sat out the match for the same reason, although his club promptly fined him for doing so, before pointedly redirecting the money to an LGBT charity.
In 2022, when the then PSG midfielder Idrissa Gueye refused to wear the LGBT colours, he was criticised by a number of political figures in France.
In a leaked email, the National Council of Ethics of the French Football Federation (FFF) demanded an explanation from Gueye, and wrote: “There are two possibilities. Either these allegations are unfounded and we invited you to speak without delay to silence these rumours. For example, we invite you to accompany your message with a photograph wearing said shirt. Or the rumours are true and we invite you to realise the impact of your act, and the grave error committed.”
As the sports journalist Martin Samuel remarked at the time: “The politeness in the FFF’s discourse is laughable. They are not inviting Gueye to do anything. They are telling him. This is what you must say; this is what you must wear.”
The recent spate of incidents in which LFP-led attempts to compel expression failed have led some commentators to suggest that players’ contracts should from now on contain specific stipulations about joining anti-discrimination campaigns, making it more difficult for them to refuse to participate in political campaigns.
“Every player’s contract can be bespoke,” commented Andy Scott, an international football editor for the Agence France-Presse in Paris. “It can be as specific as ‘This player will have a VIP box for his family at matches.’ There’s no reason why going forward, participating in these types of [anti-discrimination] campaigns couldn’t be included in a contract. As in, ‘You must participate in these campaigns because it’s damaging for our image if you don’t.’”
Across Europe, elite football clubs and footballing authorities appear increasingly irritated by fans and players who refuse to publicly endorse ‘progressive’ values.
Earlier this year it emerged that FSU member and Newcastle United Football Club (NUFC) supporter Linzi Smith has been banned from attending home matches for the remainder of this season and the next two for expressing legally protected gender critical views online.
Her ‘crime’ in the eyes of her hometown club was to criticise the view that men who identify as women should be treated as if they were indistinguishable from biological women, including being able to access women’s changing rooms, compete against women in sports like football and rugby and be housed in women’s jails.
In the German Bundesliga attempts are also underway to police what fans say about matters of ongoing public debate, and where necessary either curtail their freedom of expression or politically ‘re-educate’ them if ever they say something perfectly lawful that happens not to align with fashionable orthodoxy.
Back in January, the German Football Association (DFB) ordered Bundesliga club Bayer Leverkusen to pay an €18,000 fine after fans at a game in November held a banner aloft that appeared to take aim at trans ideology. The ‘gender critical’ slogan read: “There are many genres of music, but only two genders.”
Having ruled that the banner constituted “discriminatory unsportsmanlike behaviour”, the association then stipulated that a third of the €18,000 fine must be used for “preventive measures against discrimination”, with the club now required to submit evidence of the steps it is taking to stamp down on the public expression of gender critical beliefs by July.
Back in the 1970s, of course, East Germany had a wonderfully efficient, low-cost grassroots system for keeping tabs on people’s political beliefs – perhaps with only €6,000 to spend, the club should look to revive that system.
