In the tranquility of the PSG training center in Bougival (Yvelines), only disturbed by the cries of wild geese, Didier Ollé-Nicolle, the coach of the opposing women’s team this Saturday in Montpellier (2 p.m.), in quarter final of the Coupe de France, took the time, this Friday morning, to discuss the tragic news in Ukraine. On December 8, PSG had indeed traveled to Kharkiv (6-0), in the east of the country, in the group stage of the Champions League.
He is therefore very concerned about the war that has since broken out there. “Two or three weeks ago I feared this war,” he says. Everyone said: no, it can’t happen, but I had the bad feeling that if… Because I’m not afraid to say it: when you’re dealing with Putin, anything can happen. And it happened. So I’m actually thinking of all the people we met in Kharkiv. When we see the damage in Kharkiv today, this city where we were…”
“I like the sportsmen who open it”
The coach remembers: “We saw people going to work, walking, already being in pain because it’s not a people for whom everything is easy, whether geographically, cold, snow, economic means. But we realize that they are proud, they defend their country. So me in any case I am really wholeheartedly with them, at my small level. And if I can do something, I will do it, whether it’s in the name of football, in the name of sport. »
Didier Ollé Nicolle continues, moved: “But it actually hurts the guts to see that. Children, women, civilians who are under the bombs, who suffer, who die while we were there. There are perhaps some that we have met and we have a feeling of helplessness compared to a guy who decides on people’s lives. I think it’s too awful and too disgusting. So at the moment I like the sportsmen who open it up, who step up and who call on everyone to revolt. And then to make this guy disappear. »
“We think of the Ukrainians”
With its many nationalities in a locker room where Nadia Nadim, the former striker born in Afghanistan and now in the United States, has passed, the PSG women’s team is necessarily very marked by the international situation. In Fleury (4-0), last Sunday, the Polish Paulina Dudek celebrated her goal with a message of peace.
“Germany, Poland, it’s not very far from Ukraine, still underlines Ollé-Nicolle. We have players who can be impacted, a little by the family, by the geographical aspect, etc… But hey, it’s mainly the Ukrainians that we think of. In any case, I take up the cause for them and I’m not afraid to say that I hate Putin. »