During its meeting on Wednesday evening, the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) disciplinary committee validated the 2-0 win secured by Le Mans at Bastia on Saturday, during the 34th matchday of Ligue 2. Play was halted in the dying seconds when referee Ruddy Buquet sent players back to the dressing rooms to protect them from fireworks and smoke bombs hurled from the stands.

The match never resumed, but the disciplinary body, after a brief review, confirmed the score. This result sends Le Mans into Ligue 1 while Bastia are relegated to Ligue 3—the professional division set to replace the National next season.

Bastia avoids point deduction despite repeated incidents

Bastia were handed two enforced stadium closures and one suspended closure but avoided the deduction of a league point for next season, which had been a possibility. The club was already under probation following prior crowd disturbances less than six months earlier. On December 5, the match between Bastia and Red Star was definitively abandoned shortly before half-time after a smoke bomb was thrown onto the pitch from the supporters’ kop.

The projectile struck an away player, Bradley Danger, from Audoniens. Bastia were subsequently handed a 0-0 defeat by default and lost a point with probation. However, this time, the disciplinary committee decided against imposing further sanctions. “In principle, a point is deducted when a match participant is directly affected by an incident. In this case, no one was hit during the Bastia-Le Mans game, so there was no justification to revoke the probation,” explained Sébastien Deneux, president of the LFP disciplinary committee.