It’s not been a good year for Olympique Lyon. The financially and athletically struggling club will have to do without its coach Paulo Fonseca, who was only hired at the end of January, for months. He was suspended until the end of November (!) for losing his cool against Stade Brest.
It’s not been Paulo Fonseca’s season, that’s for sure. The 52-year-old was sacked as AC Milan manager in December after a string of poor performances, but then took over from Pierre Sage at Olympique Lyon just a few weeks later.
Fonseca started with a 2-3 defeat in Marseille, but then celebrated two clear wins in a row (4-0 against Reims and 4-1 in Montpellier) before losing the league clash against PSG (2-3) and then celebrating a 2-1 win against Stade Brest. The game against Brest will now probably be his last for Lyon for a long time, because the Portuguese had a major falling out with referee Benoit Millot during the game – and now he has suffered the consequences.
Freak-out does not go unpunished
Deep into stoppage time in the nerve-wracking duel, in which Lyon had turned a deficit around, there was a VAR check with a view to a possible penalty decision for Brest. There was no penalty, but Fonseca had apparently been too upset on the sidelines by the check and was shown the red card by referee Millot.
The OL coach then lost his cool and attacked the referees both physically and verbally – he came within a few millimeters of the referees and shouted at them loudly. It was already relatively clear that this would have consequences, but probably not how dramatic they would be.
Fonseca was banned from the game for several months by the disciplinary committee of the French Football League (LFP). The Portuguese is banned from the sidelines until November 30 and from entering his team’s dressing room on match days until September 15. It is therefore clear that the 52-year-old will no longer be available to the Frenchman on match days during the season and beyond.
“I shouldn’t have done that, that’s true,” the coach said after the game and apologized. But there was no mercy, and why should there be? Fonseca wanted to ‘physically intimidate’ him, referee Millot told L’Equipe, and he also indicated ‘a headbutt’. ‘It’s hard to imagine such an aggressive attitude in a professional coach.’
