PARIS, Oct 25: Olympique Marseille boss Bernard Tapie has been accused by a French television journalist of assaulting him in a fashion shop near the Champs-Elysees, French media reported on Thursday.

Pascal Praud, soccer correspondent of television channel TF1, told the daily Le Parisien the encounter on Wednesday started in a “how-do-you-do mode” but that Tapie added:

“I’ll feel better when you stop reporting rubbish about Marseille”.

Tapie, according to the paper, blamed the journalist for saying that Marseille had “used more coaches over the last six months than Nantes in 45 years”.

“Tapie said I was a bastard. He punched me in the face and kicked me in the groin,” Praud added.

The journalist said he went to the nearest police station to file a suit.

Tapie was not immediately available for comment, but according to Le Parisien he denied beating the journalist, saying he had just “grabbed him by the neck”.

Tapie, Marseille’s former chairman who is now their sports director, had stormy relations with the press during his last spell at the club in the 1990s when he was jailed for match-fixing.—Reuters