Marseille Fans Kind Of Upset With Former Player, Hang Him In Effigy

Mathieu Valbuena starred for French club Marseille for eight long, prosperous seasons before moving on to richer pastures last summer. He was their best player and the crowd favorite for many a year, and when he left for Dynamo Moscow the club retired his number. After one season in Russia, he’s back in France, now playing for Lyon. As you can see in the video below (which you gotta watch on Youtube since Ligue 1 hates you), fans were a little less understanding about this move.

The video shows the effigy, the many huge signs calling Valbuena a traitor, and a couple of the nasty tackles he suffered at the hands of his old teammates. One of them was enough to earn the tackler, Romain Alessandrini, a red card.

Missing from the short video are the 20 minutes the game was suspended while officials tried to calm down the irate supporters, who began raining all kinds of projectiles, including beer bottles, on Valbuena as he sought to take a corner kick.

And all of this because a former Marseille man had the temerity to play for Lyon, which isn’t even Marseille’s main rival. Soccer fans are crazy.