Five hundred thousand euros to an uncle
That figure is what set Christophe Dugarry off on Rothen s’enflamme on RMC on Thursday. The target was not Malick Fofana. It was the people around him, after the details of his move from Lyon to Sunderland leaked out across the week.
The 1998 world champion fixed on one specific mechanism. Fofana had an alternative in Crystal Palace, where he would have worked again with Pierre Sage, his old coach at Lyon. He went to Sunderland instead, and the show’s reporting put the commissions paid to his representatives at the centre of that decision, including half a million euros to one of his uncles.
“The disgraceful behaviour is obviously coming from the family. It’s scandalous and unbelievable,” Dugarry said. “The first conversation you should be having with your player is: where do you want to go? What the player wants matters above everything else.”
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Fofana does not walk away clean either
Dugarry allowed the player some room. He called Fofana a quiet kid, one who may simply not have had the hardness required to push back against his own relatives.
Jerome Rothen was less generous. The presenter kept coming back to the same point: the Belgium international signed the contract himself, nobody else did, and the way money now dictates where footballers spend their careers was fair game for the rest of the segment.
From an uncle in Lyon to Infantino’s office
Dugarry pulled the argument outwards, reaching for the disputes swirling around Gianni Infantino at FIFA. “When Infantino is ready to sell football to the highest bidder, how do you expect a family member not to go and ask for 500,000 euros from a club that is willing to hand it over?”
Then the line that carried the whole rant. “Modern football is, in some respects, disgusting.” He was careful to add that none of these practices are new. The Fofana file, meanwhile, ate the final day of the window and much of the airtime around it.
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