Saturday evening in Dijon, ASSE thought they were experiencing a classic Coupe de France evening. But after forty-five tense minutes against Quetigny, an external element completely disrupted the scenario. In a few moments, the match shifted into an unreal atmosphere, plunging referees, players and supporters into a situation never seen before this season. For many minutes, no one knew if the meeting would resume.
What triggered the total outage
The person responsible for this chaos: a fog of exceptional density, which fell suddenly at half-time. In a few minutes, the lawn of the Gaston-Gérard stadium became a ghost space where it was impossible to distinguish the other half of the field. Quetigny’s equalizer, just before the break, had already surprised the Greens, but what followed was close to the unprecedented. The referees immediately order a complete stoppage of play and send both teams to the locker room.
The wait turns into a marathon. The officials return to the pitch at regular intervals to test visibility: nothing improves. The fog thickens again. The planned 10 minutes become 20, then 45. According to the regulations of the Coupe de France, a definitive stoppage would then have sent the two teams to a replayed match… with a score of 0-0. The Greens are very close to a nightmarish evening.
A crazy decision and a transformed second half
At 10:19 p.m., against all expectations, the referees decided to restart, even though the visibility seemed worse than an hour earlier. Horneland then completely revises his instructions: “play shorter, find yourself quickly, avoid invisible long balls”. An adaptation paid off, since N’Guessan scored in the 48th minute, before young Kévin Pedro sealed the score in a controlled 3-1 despite the conditions.
The match will go down as one of the strangest episodes of the Saint-Etienne season. An evening where the Coupe de France flirted with the absurd and where ASSE was able to pull away despite an improbable context. Without the ultimate decision of the referees, this match would perhaps never have resumed. In Dijon, the Greens defeated Quetigny… and above all the weather.
