The man who has long been presented as the financier of French football is convinced that Bernard Tapie bought matches other than VA-OM.
Bernard Tapie is undoubtedly at the origin of the biggest scandal in French football. In the spring of 1993, a few days before the Champions League final against AC Milan, Olympique de Marseille tried to buy several players from Valenciennes so that they would slow down. The start of the VA-OM affair which will lead to the club’s descent into the second division and precipitate the fall of the businessman.
Enough to tarnish the record of the former boss of OM in the eyes of Jean-Claude Darmon, long considered the great financier of French football. And all the more so since, according to the native of Oran, the VA-OM match was not an isolated case.
“Afterwards, the VA-OM affair is a huge bullshit. And the consequence of having committed it several times, he thus confided in an interview given to Figaro on the occasion of the release of his book “Destin”. They did not take the usual precautions. I’m not the only one to say this, Pascal Olmeta told me: “Every time, Tapie told us that he was going to pay the opponents, I wanted to kill him because we had the impression of being of no use.” Did Tapie pay for other matches than VA-OM? Yes, obviously. »
“It’s like serial killers”
“That’s VA-OM’s big mistake. Afterwards, you no longer pay attention, he continued. It’s like serial killers, if the killer kills once and doesn’t do it again at all, he’s hard to catch. There, no. Maybe others did it before him but once or twice. You can’t do this four, five or six times. This is not possible. »
Jean-Claude Darmon does not forget Bernard Tapie’s contribution to French football in general and to Olympique de Marseille in particular. “Whether we like it or not, Bernard Tapie gave France a European Cup even though we had never won anything. He cannot have done anything but harm to French football, he whispered. But he wanted to be everywhere and all the time, above all he made a fundamental error which cost him his life: politics. »
