The report is damning. According to the summary of the audit mission on the French Football Federation delivered on Wednesday, the "drifts of behavior" of the president of the French Football Federation, Noël Le Graët, "are incompatible with the exercise of functions and the requirement of exemplarity which is attached to it".
The document from the General Inspectorate of Education, Sport and Research (IGESR), dated Wednesday, points to "inappropriate public positions", "inappropriate behavior [...] towards women ", in particular through "ambiguous SMS for some and of a clearly sexual nature for others", and "invites the federal authorities to examine this situation in application of the statutory provisions".
"The hearings conducted by the mission have shown that the inappropriate and abusive nature of Noël Le Graët's remarks can be accentuated by excessive alcohol consumption", write the inspectors again, after four and a half months of investigation and more of a hundred testimonies collected.
They claim to have taken into account the observations made by his lawyers after the sending of a preliminary report, on January 30, but assure that "the general meaning" of the final report, delivered on Wednesday, "was not found. amended". As a result, they still consider that the leader of the FFF "no longer has the necessary legitimacy to administer and represent French football".
The listeners recognize that Le Graët "enjoyed a very positive image in the world of football, after having straightened the finances of the FFF and modernized its organization in the service of a positive sporting dynamic", before the "very centralized use of power leads to "dysfunctions and clan logics".
The summary also highlights "the brutal methods and the behavior deemed erratic" of general manager Florence Hardouin, laid off in January, which "no longer allows her to exercise recognized authority".
The "asserted skills" of the DG are, of course, recognized, but its "decision-making autonomy" has "drift towards a worrying isolation for the institution", says the document, pointing to the relationship that has become "toxic" between Le Graët and Hardouin. She also claims to have "suffered from the inappropriate behavior" of the 81-year-old leader.
The executive committee, a sort of government of the FFF, is also singled out. The functioning of the body, described as "a place of findings and consensus", "illustrates a weakness of democratic exercise", because internal projects are "little or not debated", is it written.
