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The professional team of Paris Saint-Germain, November 6, 2018. REUTERS / Ciro De Luca

After alleged breaches of the financial fair play rules, now ethnic registration ... Already under the spell of a first salvo of revelations of the site of investigation Mediapart, Paris Saint Germain is again in turmoil. In question, illegal practices in the recruitment of young footballers.

What reveals Mediapart is that for several years, the recruiters of Paris Saint-Germain, responsible for going to observe young footballers, ticked small boxes mentioning their ethnic origin. "French, Maghrebi, Antillean, African": these are the choices. However, this practice is simply illegal, and punishable by 5 years of imprisonment and 300 000 euros fine. It would have conditioned in part the recruitment of some players to the detriment of others.

In short a record that is reminiscent of another case, the quota that had shaken the French Football Federation then led by Fernand Duchaussoy. In 2011, Mediapart revealed the remarks made by the coach of the France team at the time during a meeting with the National Technical Department. Laurent Blanc said he was in favor of introducing binational quotas for young players.

The PSG puts forward a personal initiative

In the case of the PSG, the club reacted, lambasting a personal initiative of the head of recruitment: Marc Westerloppe, in charge of the recruitment cell, outside the Ile-de-France region. Either a close to the former sports director of PSG, Olivier Létang.

Westerloppe would have opposed the recruitment of a promising young player, native of Ivory Coast, and current French international U-18, Yann Gboho. At the time, he played at FC Rouen and caught the eye of a recruiter. On his card, it was mentioned its origin: "Antillais", then corrected, replaced by "Black Africa". An origin that was problematic in 2014 to the director of the recruitment cell, Marc Westerloppe who according to Mediapart said at a meeting: " We need a balance in the mix, too many West Indians and Africans in Paris ... "Words that had moved internally, including the head of recruitment in Ile-de-France, for whom recruitment should not be, I quote, an" ethnic question but talent "...

" It should never have happened at PSG "

The management had called the Westerloppe meeting by the secretary of the works council, for a preliminary interview in general, the first step before a dismissal. He had denied having made such comments, denouncing accusations " false, malicious and stupid " and had not been sanctioned. Jean-Claude Blanc, deputy general manager of the PSG, also ensures that he did not learn that in October 2018 the presence of ethnic criteria in the profiles of recruiters. " It should never have happened in Paris Saint-Germain, " he said, an internal investigation has been triggered according to him.

Little anecdote: Gboho and Westerloppe now meet in the corridors of Stade Rennais where the player signed in 2016 and the recruiter joined early in the season.

The principal implicated pleads clumsiness

Interviewed by the newspaper Le Parisien, Marc Westerloppe pleads clumsiness. In his entourage, it is considered that it was in the mind of the recruiter, information like any other. And who could avoid some administrative problems, some pointing to the lack of certainty that we can have on the birth dates of players born in Africa. Others lean towards the hypothesis of sports marketing: recruit players according to their origin to highlight them in certain regions of the world. In short, African players for a better visibility in Africa, the same for Asia.

A version hard to believe as the long-term investment on a player seems too random to think about this aspect from their 13 years. That said especially something of a system, that of French football. This case reveals that former recruiters admit to ticking the famous ethnic box mechanically, as if this posed no problem.