A preliminary investigation was opened into sexual assault targeting former PSG coach Didier Ollé-Nicolle, after the filing of a complaint in June by a former player of the same club Kadidiatou Diani, the Versailles prosecutor’s office to Agence France-Presse (AFP), confirming information from Le Parisien.
The public prosecutor specified that he was seeking “to make [Ms. Diani] heard so that she can come and explain what she denounced in this complaint.” He also confirmed that his complaint targeted two gestures attributed to the ex-coach, who allegedly touched Diani’s buttocks in August 2021, the first time leaving the locker room during a friendly match in Toulouse, and the second with a mini baseball bat as she boarded a bus with other PSG players during a pre-season training camp in the United States.
“Didier Ollé-Nicolle firmly contests the facts with which he is accused and of which he knows nothing at this stage,” declared his lawyer, Me Guillaume Traynard, contacted by AFP. The ex-coach “reserves the possibility of filing a complaint in turn to defend his honor and assert his rights,” concluded his counsel.
A departure from the club in August 2022
According to a source close to the matter, the Parisian club launched an internal investigation in May 2022 for “inappropriate” behavior towards a player when the facts concerned by the complaint of Kadidiatou Diani – who today plays at Olympique Lyonnais – were reassembled. Didier Ollé-Nicolle, now 62 years old, was then fired and players, including Kadidiatou Diani, as well as the former coach were questioned. A few months after this suspension, PSG clarified that “no fault or breach [had] been held against him”. The club and the technician separated in the summer of 2022.
Elements that emerged during the investigation into the physical assault of another ex-PSG player, Kheira Hamraoui, pushed the Versailles prosecutor’s office to open a judicial investigation on May 15, 2022 against having authority” following inappropriate words and gestures towards a minor player at the time, who did not file a complaint. This investigation is “still under investigation” and “approaching the end”, the public prosecutor told AFP on Wednesday.
