Football
Ian Holyman, France correspondent 9y

French clubs to hold minute's silence for victims of Charlie Hebdo attack

Clubs in France's top two divisions will hold a minute's silence ahead of matches this weekend in memory of the 12 people killed in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.

The French Football League (LFP) announced the decision in a press release issued on Wednesday evening, hours after two gunmen had entered the magazine's office on the east side of the French capital and shot leading members of the paper, as well as two policemen.

Before Wednesday's Ligue 1 game between Lille and Evian-Thonon-Gaillard, which had been postponed before Christmas, the teams held a minute's silence to honour those murdered.

Lille fans burst into a spontaneous rendition of France's national anthem, la Marseillaise, during the game and chanted the name of the paper.

"It was more than the day's topic of conversation," Lille boss Rene Girard told media following his team's 1-0 win. "Everyone has been affected by this catastrophe. It would have been difficult to postpone the game again. But it's true that the football was completely secondary."

France's leading sports daily L'Equipe dedicated the entirety of its front page to the tragedy with the headline "Liberty 0 Barbarism 12," and gave over its first two pages to past Charlie Hebdo cartoons that dealt with a range of sporting matters.

"L'Equipe today takes the liberty to look at news very different to that which your paper has accustomed you to," read a front-page editorial cosseted in the upper right-hand corner with the slogan of Wednesday's spontaneous peaceful gatherings in Paris, Je suis Charlie, printed in the opposite corner.

"We are certainly all Charlie, but to make you smile in spite of everything, we have decided that the real Charlie was the best."

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