A French campaign group has renewed calls for authorities to take action against homophobic chanting by soccer fans, saying Marseille supporters belted out anti-gay slurs “with complete impunity” during a home game against Monaco on Sunday.
The Rouge Direct group posted a footage on social networks showing Marseille supporters shouting threatening and insulting chants aimed at Monaco. The discriminatory chants at the Stade Velodrome are just the latest of in a long series of similar incidents as French soccer authorities struggle to tackle the issue.
The Marseille game was not stopped, even though France’s Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau suggested earlier this year that matches should be halted when fans chant homophobic slurs in stadiums.
The Rouge Direct group asked Marseille, the league and France's Interior ministry to shed light on the incident. It also urged broadcaster DAZN to remove the replay of the game from its platform.
Marseille won the game 2-1 thanks to a late penalty scored by Mason Greenwood. The result lifted Marseille over its southern rival into second place in the standings.
Homophobic insults often heard at Ligue 1 matches have been tolerated for a long time by club officials, and soccer authorities have struggled to find appropriate ways of tackling the issue.
Following a match at the Parc des Princes years ago between PSG and Marseille during which home fans used homophobic insults, the league launched an action plan allowing spectators to report sexist, homophobic or racist incidents they witness. The abuse has not stopped, though, even intensifying in recent months.
French clubs have been sanctioned with fines, and the league’s disciplinary commission also ordered the closure of stands for similar cases in recent years. Also, French law provides for up to one year imprisonment and a 45,000 euros ($47,600) fine when anti-gay insults are made in public.
Last season, some PSG players received a one-match suspended sentence by the league disciplinary committee for offensive chants aimed at Marseille after a home league match. Ousmane Dembélé, Achraf Hakimi, Randal Kolo Muani and Layvin Kurzawa were filmed using insults while celebrating at the end of a 4-0 win against Marseille. The four players issued apologies. That match was also marred by homophobic chanting by sections of PSG fans targeting Marseille players.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - Olympique de Marseille fans cheer during an Europa League semifinal first leg soccer match between Olympique de Marseille and Atalanta at the Velodrome stadium in Marseille, France, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole, file)
EAGAN, Minn. (AP) — As another frigid winter settles over Minnesota with temperatures dipping into the teens, people like Ed Kranz are embracing the cold — and working up quite a sweat.
Kranz and his wife, Colleen, are among Minnesotans who believe the best way to endure winter is to heat up in saunas and then cool off in their state's icy weather.
On a bone-chilling Sunday morning, they set up a mobile wood-fired sauna from their business, Saunable, near a frozen lake in the Minneapolis suburb of Eagan. After about 10 minutes of sweating in the 185 degrees Fahrenheit (85 degrees Celsius) sauna they moseyed outside into the 15-degree temperatures, lingering around a fire in bathing suits before repeating the process three or four more times. One brave soul dipped into a hole in the frozen lake for a post-sauna cold plunge.
Their hot-and-cold venture is common in Minnesota, where plenty of residents embrace sauna culture for warmth and community. Devotees say they are mingling Old World traditions with newfangled internet-based communities, and making social connections in a society that can feel isolating.
Sauna and cold plunges go together like peanut butter and jelly, said Glenn Auerbach, a self-described sauna evangelist and the founder and editor of SaunaTimes. Auerbach started the website in 2008 to share his thoughts, research and conversations with movers and shakers in the sauna world. He and his interlocutors mull over the nitty-gritty of sauna construction, how to cultivate “good sauna vibes” and the potential health benefits of the sauna lifestyle.
A typical temperature to achieve the holy trinity of the sauna experience — heat, steam and ventilation — is about 180 to 200 degrees F (82-93 degrees C), a temperature that starkly contrasts Minnesota's frigid winter weather.
The craftiest in the sauna community can build a facility for about $10,000, according to Auerbach. Those looking to skip the physical labor can outsource the construction. Sauna's popularity, which enthusiasts say spiked following the COVID-19 pandemic, has brought with it a rise in manufacturers selling saunas for about $30,000 to $40,000.
While sauna's cultural cache may have increased in recent years, the practice long predates the Instagrammable spaces now popping up, Auerbach said.
The smell of cedar wood has been lodged in Justin Juntunen's memory ever since he first stepped into his family's sauna as a child. Juntunen, the founder of Cedar and Stone Nordic Sauna, is a descendant of Finnish immigrants who came to America in the 1880s. They brought with them an appreciation for saunas and the communal values the steam-filled rooms impart to local life.
People in Finland say there are more saunas than cars, Juntunen said. When immigrants like his grandfather came to Minnesota to work in the mines, mills or docks, they would often save up to build a farmhouse. But they would build a sauna first, living in the space while the house was constructed. Later, saunas would serve as informal town centers.
People gossiped in saunas, they gave birth in saunas and they died in saunas, Juntunen said. The public nature of the facilities reflects the egalitarian ethos that infuses Nordic culture, and sauna culture by extension, he added.
“This is a tradition that’s actually for everyone,” Juntunen said. “My favorite Nordic proverb is all people are created equal, but nowhere more so than in the sauna."
In addition to a desire for in-person experiences following the COVID-19 pandemic, sauna enthusiasts say interest rose after some of the internet’s most famous figures, such as podcasters Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman, touted it.
“Every big podcaster in the world discovered that you could jump in cold water and it feels kind of good. And then people click on it online,” Juntunen said.
In this way, technology has been a paradox for sauna culture, he added. Digital media helped sauna culture grow at the same time as saunas were billed as reprieves from the pervasive reach of technology over every facet of daily life.
Either way, almost all of sauna culture's adherents say its rise is inextricably linked to a desire for community.
Those who committed to building their own saunas have hosted friends, neighbors, and former high school hockey teammates over. This has created a new form of post-COVID-19 contagiousness: “Good heat is contagious,” Auerbach said.
This core function of sauna culture spans generations. Juntunen's grandfather would rush to the sauna after work because it was the space where stories were told.
"It’s a space where storytelling happens, where connection happens or silence happens," Juntunen said. “I think that is a really beautiful example of what a sauna truly is.”
Miki Mosman, Emily Scribner-O’Pray and Darcy Sudderth cool off outside a Saunable mobile sauna at Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Eagan, Minn., Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024. (AP photo/Mark Vancleave)
Jeff Tait, of Hastings, Minn., cools off after a session in a Saunable mobile sauna at Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Eagan, Minn. on Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024. (AP photo/Mark Vancleave)
Jeff Tait, of Hastings, Minn. ,cools off after a session in a Saunable mobile sauna at Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Eagan, Minn., Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024. (AP photo/Mark Vancleave)
Sauna enthusiasts Jeff Tait, Emily Scribner-O’Pray, Darcy Sudderth, Miki Mosman and Igor Rudenko share a 75-minute session in a Saunable mobile sauna at Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Eagan, Minn., Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024. (AP photo/Mark Vancleave)
