الطرف نظرة عامة

Lyon's Ligue 1 clash against Rennes descended into chaos on Saturday evening as the match was temporarily suspended following crowd trouble at the Groupama Stadium. Despite a dominant start on the pitch, the focus shifted to the stands when offensive displays forced the match officials to take drastic action.

"La France, c'est vous." Translated as 'France, is you', that was what French president Charles de Gaulle told footballer Rachid Mekhloufi in 1968. Mekhloufi had just led his Saint-Etienne side to the double, and the reward was an audience with the most powerful man in the country. For Mekhloufi, this sentence brought things full circle. Now he was both Algerian and French; 10 years earlier, he had - in a sense - been neither.