Lyon reportedly dropped Marcelo over “continuous farting and laughing in the dressing room”

Flatulence occasionally comes up in sports, and in other news, but it’s unusual to see farts cited as a reason for a player’s dismissal. That’s apparently what happened with Brazilian defender Marcelo’s dismissal from French Ligue 1 side Lyon, though. The 34-year-old defender was axed from that club’s first team last August, with discussions of him “caught laughing during captain Leo Dubois’ speech” and having “a verbal altercation with teammate Maxwel Cornet” at that point. He now plays for Bordeaux, a team he joined in January. But the flatulence side of his Lyon exit has only now come up, with ESPN’s Julien Laurens referencing this in a piece published Tuesday:

Brazilian defender Marcelo was dropped from the Lyon first team due to continuous farting and laughing in the dressing room, sources have told ESPN.

…Marcelo was caught laughing during captain Leo Dubois’ speech to rally the troops following the game, which didn’t go down well with manager Peter Bosz and sporting director Juninho.

However, according to ESPN sources, Marcelo was also disciplined by the club for repeatedly farting among his teammates in the dressing room and laughing in the presence of Juninho and Bosz.

Marcelo was considered one of the leaders of the team and had signed a new contract a few months before the start of the season, but the club described his actions after the Angers loss as “inappropriate behaviour.”

Here’s some exclusive footage of how this played out:

Or, alternatively:

Or, further alternatively:

This was also reported in French paper L’Equipe. And Marcelo (who hadn’t tweeted since October) made a rare return to social media to address this:

Thanks to @lequipe, after a long time, I have to come back to @Twitter to deny all the allegations. Journalism nowadays is a joke!

— Marcelo Guedes (@MarceloGuedes02) May 10, 2022

It’s certainly funny to see discussion of serious personnel moves that took place in response to a player “repeatedly farting.” And, sure, maybe there was cause for this dismissal, or maybe Marcelo’s denial is correct and this wasn’t about farting at all. It’s definitely humorous that this is the discussion, though.

[ESPN; image via Nikontino on Flickr/Wikipedia]