As recently as May this year Christophe Galtier was coaching Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé and celebrating a Ligue 1 title triumph with Paris Saint-Germain. On 15 December he will stand trial in a French court on criminal charges of race and religious discrimination – offences committed, it is alleged, while he was manager of Nice between June 2021 and July 2022, charges Galtier denies.
This is real-world criminal justice, not football’s soft-soap version. If found guilty Galtier could face up to three years in prison. The stakes are vertiginously high in other ways too, at a trial that promises a dark night of the soul for French football and France itself, at a time of deeply fractured domestic politics.
