Pressure growing on struggling Nantes ahead of trip to Ligue 1 leader PSG

PARIS (AP) — Bunch of tourists.

Welcome to Club Med.

Those were some of the sarcastic accusations of laziness aimed at Nantes players by their own fans at home when they warmed up before last Sunday's Ligue 1 game against Le Havre.

Near the end of the match one angry supporters group — the main ultras group called Brigade Loire — had enough and attempted a pitch invasion at Stade de la Beaujoire. Many wore balaclavas and tried to barge through metal barriers before being pushed back by riot police.

The game was eventually completed and the 2-0 defeat left Nantes — one of France's most decorated clubs with eight league titles, four French Cups and one Champions League semifinal — languishing in 16th place.

These are gloomy times at Nantes and things are not set to get any easier, with a trip to league leader Paris Saint-Germain on Saturday.

The Brigade Loire are banned from attending the game at Parc des Princes, but the pressure on Nantes remains the same.

“I feel for the supporters. We're not playing well at the moment and we can't be satisfied with how things are going," Nantes coach Antoine Kombouaré said. “The crowd can sing what they like (about us). We understand their disappointment, we must shut our mouths and get on with it.”

However, Kombouaré drew the line at pitch invasions.

“You can insult us, jeer us, but you can't come on the pitch,” he said. “Violence is forbidden. It's not normal to come to the stadium with a balaclava on. What's that all about?”

Kombouaré and some of the squad have been here before.

Kombouaré was hailed as a saviour after preventing Nantes from relegation in 2021. Fans turned on the team at heated training sessions and wanted president Waldemir Kita to go. Two coaches were fired that season before Kombouaré stepped in.

It went down to the wire. Nantes edged a tense promotion-relegation battle against Toulouse on away goals. May 30, 2021, was a scary day for Nantes fans, with Toulouse one goal away from sending Nantes down.

The following season Kombouaré completely turned fortunes around, with the club finishing ninth and winning the French Cup to qualify for the Europa League.

So, no matter how despondent Nantes fans are feeling now, there is hope while Kombouaré is still around.

Especially since his attachment to the club runs deep.

Kombouaré was there when the Beaujoire stadium opened in 1984 and played 177 games as a rugged defender for Nantes, which is nicknamed “Les Canaris” (The Canaries) because of its distinctive all-yellow strip.

The club's glory era saw it reach the 1996 semifinals of the Champions League, edged 4-3 by eventual champion Juventus over two legs.

Things are completely different now.

Nantes narrowly avoided relegation by one point in 2023, finishing 16th, and last season was 14th out of 18 teams.

This season already feels like déjà vu.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

FILE - Nantes' Jean-Philippe Gbamin, left, and Lyon's Corentin Tolisso compete for the ball during the French League One soccer match between Lyon and FC Nantes at the Groupama stadium in Decines, outside Lyon, France, on Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

FILE - Nantes' coach Antoine Kombouare gives instructions to his players during the French Cup final soccer match between Nice and Nantes at the Stade de France stadium, in Saint Denis, north of Paris, on May 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File)

Five-time Grand Slam champion Iga Swiatek accepted a one-month suspension after testing positive for the banned substance trimetazidine, a heart medication known as TMZ, the International Tennis Integrity Agency announced Thursday.

Swiatek failed an out-of-competition drug test in August, and the ITIA accepted her explanation that the result was unintentional and was caused by the contamination of a nonprescription medication, melatonin, that Swiatek was taking for issues with jet lag and sleeping.

It was determined her level of fault was “at the lowest end of the range for no significant fault or negligence,” the ITIA said.

This is the second recent high-profile doping case in tennis: The top-ranked man, Jannik Sinner, failed two tests for a steroid in March and was cleared in August, right before the start of the U.S. Open, which he went on to win for his second Grand Slam title of the season.

Swiatek is a 23-year-old from Poland who was ranked No. 1 most of the past two seasons but is now at No. 2. She won the French Open in June for her fifth major championship and took home a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics in early August.

TMZ is the drug at the center of the case involving 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.

Swiatek formally admitted the anti-doping rule violation on Wednesday and accepted her penalty.

She already was provisionally suspended from Sept. 22 to Oct. 4, missing three tournaments during the post-U.S. Open hard-court swing in Asia — the Korea Open, the China Open and the Wuhan Open.

That provisional ban was ended after her appeal showed that her test result came inadvertently from contaminated melatonin.

Because the ultimate agreement was for a month suspension, she will serve the remaining eight days now, while there’s no competition, and be cleared to return to play as of Dec. 4.

Swiatek also was fined the prize money of $158,944 that she earned for her semifinal run at the Cincinnati Open in August, the event immediately following the positive test.

“Once the source of the TMZ had been established, it became clear that this was a highly unusual instance of a contaminated product, which in Poland is a regulated medicine. However, the product does not have the same designation globally, and the fact that a product is a regulated medication in one country cannot of itself be sufficient to avoid any level of fault," ITIA CEO Karen Moorhouse said.

“Taking into account the nature of the medication, and all the circumstances, it does place that fault at the lowest end of the scale," Moorhouse said. "This case is an important reminder for tennis players of the strict liability nature of the World Anti-Doping Code and the importance of players carefully considering the use of supplements and medications.”

AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis

Poland's Iga Swiatek returns the ball against Italy's Jasmine Paolini during the Billie Jean King Cup semi-final tennis match at Martin Carpena Sports Hall in Malaga, southern Spain, on Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Poland's Iga Swiatek returns the ball against Italy's Jasmine Paolini during the Billie Jean King Cup semi-final tennis match at Martin Carpena Sports Hall in Malaga, southern Spain, on Monday, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)