Santos Mirasierra sentenced…

By: Magnusson | December 7th, 2008

On October 1st, before we lost the game to Atletico madrid, some of our fans were attacked by the Spanish Police because of the banners set up by the “Ultras” that same afternoon. Their reason was that it is forbidden to have skulls and bones insignae on banners in Spain. Problem is , they didn’t wait nor tell the Marseillais staff of stewards about it and decided to rip said banner to shre”ds before kickoff, injuring four supporters and kicking one seventy-year old woman (the mascott and “grandma” of the MTPs), breaking one of her ribs.

On December 2nd 2008, UEFA’s chief of communication William Gaillard said that it was “facetious to say, as we have heard, that it was the UEFA that asked for the banners to be retired. This is not how we operate and we have no power over the spanish police.” Basically, the spanish policemen took it upon their own to just tear down visiting team’s banners in order to… We actually don’t know why they did it! This banner has been going throughout Europe for twenty-four years and especially In Spain for the last four seasons. It is particularly puzzling to see that these policemen just decided it was their responsibility to take those down and beat up a few supporters in the meantime.

All in all, that night was one of the worst in recent history. Taye Taïwo, Steve Mandanda and another west-indian journalist, Thierry Trésor, of the local LCM news channel were greeted with monkey noises, racists insults and other amabilities spanish stadiae are known for. Mathieu Valbuena even got insulted by Javier Aguirre. But all that would have been fine(well, not fine but you know what I mean) if not for a supporter wrongfully arrested and sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for alledgedly pushing one policeman in the back and hitting another one with a chair. Of course there was no proof of this.
Santos Mirasierra (in the yellow hat) is a captain of the Ultras and has been for quite some time. One of the more famous supporters, who holds both french and spanish citizenships, Santos was documented as trying to be an interpret between the police officers and the supporters and is clearly trying on pictures to keep everyone’s heads cool as the Guardia Civile was charging.

NOw this blog has never been a place for something other than football. I decided after much thought not to go after Zenit St Petersburgh when Ronald Zubar received bananas while training on the sidelines and UEFA gave their stadium a slap on the wrist after an entire stadium’s racist chants. UEFA needs to grow some fucking balls. Here is a situation where a man who has travelled throughout Europe for the past 27 years to supports one team and who has been known to keep a cool head in very heated situations. A Marseille supporter, familiar enough with every fan group in this country that even the most anti-marseillais section of the Parc des Princes decided to put up a banner for the man out of his reputation. This man was wrongfully accused and was sentenced based on Televisiopn footage and the testimonial of two policemen trying to cover for their own radical actions while an entire stadium was chanting nazi chants.

UEFA first sentenced the Vincente Calderon to punich those nazis (”Sieg Hitler” is still a nazi chant right?) even though the players had nothing to do with it. But since the UEFA has no balls and michel Platini is still scared to come off as pro-french, they decided not to apply said suspension.
To scapegoat someone is hardly new but this is just a disgrace to that whole country and to their judiciary system. To hear Santos’s family cry out of frustration because of the translators incompetence (As I said before, they hold both citizenships and are bilingual) in translating the different french witnesses was heartbreaking.

The outcry in France has been unanimous as everyone saw the pictures and know OF Santos’s personnality. From Zinédine Zidane («They are retaining him when he hasn’t done anything. What they are reproaching to that man is far from the truth!») to Didier Drogba(“I still don’t understand why Santos has been emprrisonned for this long and most of all how he could have been sentenced to this long a sentence. This is totally disproportionnate! I am totally behind Santos and I want his family anbd him to know that my houghts and prayers are with them!”) and Franck Ribéry (“This is incredibly tough for that man, because he’s invested a whole lot in the club, this was a guy who came with a lot of pleasure in order to root for his own team. I know Marseille and their fans very well and I can assure you that they are real fans. This sanction is tough, three and a half years is a lot. I’ll be the first one to do anything in my power to make sure his sentence is lighter”), to most fan sections across the country, everybody has been sending in their support to the club and the family. Now all we can hope for is that Santos gets his wish and comes back to France for the rest of his sentence.

This affair has been a national matter in Spain where the Prime-Minister came in defense of Madrid’s crowd (the same one that was then sanctionned by UEFA for racism) saying that they “knew” how french fans could be (I didn’t get the memo!) while in France, in an attempt not to create problems with Spain, our ministers said they would not express themselves in the press and let the diplomacy handle those matters. Good job guys, really.

Anyway, at this point, i’m just venting and ranting as I’m particularly frustrated. My goal was to say that the better idea would clearly be to postpone this game somewhere else because let me tell you, Marseillais fans are hurt, outraged and the feeling of injustice is dominant. Nobody would want any retaliation to happen so I believe this Tuesday’s game should not take place.
Peace.