Welcome to The Athletic Mini, a short format you will see in the coming weeks on some of our soccer coverage.
On November 4 2021, on the way home from a Paris Saint-Germain team dinner, Kheira Hamraoui and Aminata Diallo were stopped by two masked men. One hit Hamraoui with an iron bar, targeting her legs, and the other held Diallo to the steering wheel.
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Ten months on, Diallo and five men were arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated assault and criminal conspiracy. According to a police report, Diallo instigated the attack on Hamraoui, her motive being “violent jealousy”. Diallo, now playing for Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia (employers of Cristiano Ronaldo), has always maintained she is innocent.
The Athletic’s Charlotte Harpur has spoken to those close to PSG, the players’ lawyers and the public prosecutor to unpick the tangled web of what has happened to the former PSG team-mates in the last two years.
Hamraoui, who joined Club America in Mexico in September, has written a book and is filming a documentary and it’s little surprise: this extraordinary web of claim and counter-claim has had ramifications far beyond PSG’s women’s team.
Have a read of Charlotte’s report but, if you don’t have time, here are the key things you should know:
- A leaked psychiatrist report said Diallo “shows no particular psychopathological traits” but did present “undeniable personality disorders”. Another police report, quoted in Le Parisien, described Diallo’s hatred for Hamraoui as “a slow, downward psychological spiral that has become pathological”. Diallo’s lawyer has described this as “bull****”.
- Diallo’s lawyers want recordings of Diallo’s conversations in her car and flat to be disregarded from the case. French media have reported the 28-year-old was wiretapped for six months from April 2022 when she was living in Paris. Diallo is heard saying: “Her attack, who cares… She didn’t even stay a day in hospital… She didn’t get anything brother… They missed her… break her face.” Diallo’s lawyers confirm Diallo said these things but maintain her words are taken out of context.
- Diallo’s fear of going to prison and serving a sentence — which could be up to 10 years for criminal conspiracy — weighs on her shoulders. “It’s a big fear for her,” her lawyer Romain Ruiz says. “She doesn’t want to be sent to jail. Her main fear is that she can be found guilty of something she didn’t do.”
- Hamraoui, 33, thinks PSG “abandoned” her and “did everything it could to make (her) leave”. She calls them “an inhumane club” and claims they forced her out and did not give her the same kit as her team-mates. PSG have not commented publicly on the case to respect the legal process but a source close to the club maintained the Paris side acted as sensitively as possible and had the right to take the team in a different direction.
- Former France manager Corinne Diacre said she was the target of intimidation in the spring of 2022 to remove Hamraoui from the national team. Hamraoui told AFP: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: in France, we don’t like victims.” The French Football Federation has not commented.
- A man referred to in initial reports as “Cesar M” — Cesar Mavacala, Diallo’s former advisor — is under police investigation for charges including threatening PSG with violence and “obtaining the departure of players and sports managers (Hamraoui and former PSG manager Didier Olle-Nicolle) from PSG by coercion”. Mavacala is the partner of the former PSG player Kadidiatou Diani and the sporting advisor of PSG and France striker Marie-Antoinette Katoto. He categorically denies any involvement.
This case is far from over.
(Photo: FRANCK FIFE/AFP via Getty Images)
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