Daniel Riolo does not have his tongue in his pocket. The listeners of L’After Foot on RMC, the program presented by Gilbert Bribois, in which he has intervened for seventeen years to dissect football and its multiple affairs in complete transparency, can testify to this. If this freedom of tone has sometimes played tricks on him, this PSG enthusiast does not hesitate to say and write the things that annoy. His 16th book, co-written with Abdelkrim Branine, Chaos Football Club (Hugo Sport editions), which will be released on April 12, lifts the veil on the chaos in which French football is entangled, between affairs at the French Football Federation, those which affect internationals like Paul Pogba or N’Golo Kanté or the aggression suffered by Kheira Hamraoui, player of the PSG women’s team.
Le Point: What was the trigger for this book?
I had a hard time finding people to work with on this file: many didn’t want to, often for fear of reprisals. I then met Abdelkrim, who knew the subject well and had a good understanding of how human relations work in this environment of petty crime around football and professional footballers.
The idea is therefore to take an interest in the entourages of the players, the pressures exerted, the rackets, etc. Quite simply the idea that there is a big cake, the player and his contract, and that a lot of people around them want to take advantage of it too. Like a territorial struggle.
That’s exactly what we’ve seen recently with the Pogba case, right?
It reassured us in a sense and even reinforced the idea that we had been right to take an interest in this phenomenon. We were all speechless in front of this affair during the summer… Then the Hamraoui-Diallo affair, in stride. These are also the two big cases that are developed in the book.
You say in the book that about the Kanté and Pogba cases the FFF knew about it but did not act.
I think they are just unable to intervene, they are overwhelmed by events. There are a lot of people internally, especially right now, who think a lot more about their place and their interests than about each other’s concerns.
The Pogba affair, the Hamraoui-Diallo affair… In your opinion, are these two isolated episodes, two epiphenomena, or, on the contrary, the tip of the iceberg?
These two cases are “Netflix series” on their own with their character galleries and twists. But pressure on players is more and more common. You have to understand that Paul Pogba is a star in the world of football. What happened to him is quite surprising. An agent told me during the investigation: “You know, you should never put pressure on someone very famous. This is the best way to attract the police immediately. »
We were not far from it in the Hamraoui-Diallo affair…
We are talking about the case of a player assaulted with an iron bar… It’s a total delirium! And there are still people who doubt the police investigation. That lawyers do their job by trying to ensure that wiretapping does not exist is one thing, but that it is relayed by influencers like Romain Molina [independent journalist who has a YouTube channel with 288,000 subscribers, Editor’s note] who does not realize that he has been instrumentalized and who, as the only answer, questions the work of the police, we have reason to wonder.
Reading the book, it seems that this file particularly marked you. For what ?
I did not know Kheira Hamraoui. Then I come across this case, I document myself. I don’t meet either side. The only one I see is the coach at the time, Didier Ollé-Nicolle, who was dragged through the mud in this case. It’s horrible: he was attributed stories of sexual assault, a judicial investigation for “sexual assault by person in authority” was even opened. It’s disgusting since he was cleared afterwards…
So it is he who will tell me the story and advise me to meet Hamraoui. I only meet her on March 2, 2023; she is accompanied by her agent. We talk, she tells me. I then discover how much she is a victim, how much she takes it, while continuing to play with her teammates. I ask her on this one date, “But how did you do it?” She replies, “It’s not for me to leave.” What I expected was for the club to take action…” He is a fascinating person of courage.
Your previous book was titled Cher football français. Aren’t you even more worried now about his future?
Basically, my dream is not necessarily that everything becomes perfect. I am a journalist, my job is to report information. So I’ll keep bringing them back, whether they’re good or not. The next big thing in football will revolve around transfer stories. The illegal exercise of the profession of agent will become a very big problem. All those people looking to “cheat” transfers too, that’s a problem!
Just look at the case of the new coach of Les Bleues, Hervé Renard. He went to sign his contract at the FFF with an undeclared agent. The Federation found nothing wrong… But I don’t have to be optimistic or pessimistic. I will continue to tell what is happening from the inside.