Öppet brev från Virage Nord / Bad Gones till Memphis Depay
Översatt från franska till engelska och ursprungligen publicerat den 14 december 2019.
Memphis,
We, the leaders of the Virage Nord, address to you this long letter to make our voice heard.
Läs hela brevet HÄR.
?
It's you, our captain, that we wish to address. By your acts, your words, and the mentality on show on Tuesday, you imposed yourself as the leader that our team needs so much. Even if things weren't always good between us, or with part of the public, the values that you hold and the fighting spirit that you breathe on the pitch are the same as ours.
Your public statement was partly addressed to us, and we feel it is necessary that we reply.
Regarding the "Marcelo" problem, we think it should have been solved a long time ago. We met with the president and Juni in October to let them know about the unacceptable behaviour of a player who has the annoying habit of showing little respect to our club, its public and our cop. We hoped that the problem would be solved internally!
Had we been heard , we would not be here today.
We do not wish to judge the sporting level of our players, we do not (all) have the competence or legitimacy to do that. However, we think that we have the right to hope for a different behaviour than was shown by your teammate towards the institution that employs him and the colors that we all defend.
We demand simply that the club fixes the behavior of a player before it takes the club hostage.
We think that you can understand that after all that is said and done, we can have a less loving approach and call a cat a cat: when a player behaves like a donkey, one shouldn't be surprised that he is portrated like one!
Since the argument for which he is mostly responsible at the Lisbon airport, where nothing justified his attitude to fight one of our own, at any moment did he stop kindling the fire. On the contrary, our silence in the media had the goal of not generating more tension about this affair so that the institution could bring an adequate resolution.
It is all in your honor and legitimacy that as captain you would want to defend one of your teammates, but at one moment, you need to be reasonable. We would have preferred that you helped him stop stooping in his paranoiac delirium created by the social networks and the persistent declarations by his partner.
On the contrary, you preferred to defend him by ignoring his responsibility, thus generating an environment that is more toxic at the stadium than away.
When on the night of the qualification for the CL knockouts, you decided to return to the dressing rooms, caught in extremis by your coach, you disappointed us. The images, as well as certain statements dismayed us even more.
How could you, in such circumstances, want to do something like that to the public?
On Tuesday, we, like you, continued to believe in qualification until the end. Unlike the majority of the stadium that had already left at half-time, the kop never let go, as we never let go in most matches, in spite of performances that are more than disappointing.
We share with you the will of never letting go and we always proved it.
You asked us to support everyone, never to leave anyone behind. We remind you that we always did that for players who were whistled by part of the public and in spite of the questionable performances, they would always count on the kop's support.
The shirt that you wear is sacred in our eyes. We refuse to fall back to whistling, or to criticize our players as the rest of the stadium or the 'coaches 2.0' that swarm the internet do.
But when one of you openly disrespects us or oversteps his duty of reserve and professionalism, we will never let it pass, whatever it costs us.
You ask who has the time to draw a donkey on a banner?The same people who spend their free time preparing tifos, going all over France to see you play and support the club they love. Do not judge our love for the club and self-sacrifice by this.
The fact that you and your teammates do not understand us, and vice-versa, is anything but illogical. We are not the same people and we never will be. We do not have the same way of expressing ourselves and seeing football. You live in it, we live it!
But what a man like you needs to try to understand, is that we always live for our love for OL sincerely, and sometimes, we admit, excessively.
And if you're not paid to be insulted, know that we do not spend our money and time to come and insult you.
On Sunday, we will be there. As always. And we will be present when most of you will have flown to other skies. We will take part with pride in the hommage that will be given for the club legend: Bernard Lacombe.
Finally, we can assure you that we only have one goal, that of seeing the club's colors shine, and we will make them shine in the stands, and it's up to you to carry out this task on the pitch. If by this events we will have managed to create a team that is solid around its captain, we will be happy to have done something that the club failed to do the past years.
Go l'OL, fight and overcome!
The office of the Bad Gones and the Kop Virage Nord
