The film cost just $11 million to make, but grossed $53 million, so the appetite Stateside for a similarly themed yarn would, no doubt, have been considerable.
In response, Diallo hired the rather colourful lawyer Carlo Alberto Brusa, who has represented the likes of Zinedine Zidane, Didier Deschamps, Karim Benzema and Franck Ribéry in the past - with mixed results, although Benzema and Ribéry were cleared of charges of having sex with an underage prostitute, while Brusa also won Zidane €5,000 in damages from a comedian who described the former French captain as “a billboard with three neurones”.
Initially - and this is a plot even too implausible for EastEnders - the theory was that Hamraoui was targeted by folk hired to ‘punish’ her for having an affair with Eric Abidal, Barcelona’s technical director, and former French international, when she had a spell with the club. We’ve all been peeved in our time after losing our place in a line-up - looking at you, under-14 school table tennis team - but largely stopped short of arranging for iron-bar-wielding chaps to intervene.Aminata Diallo in action for PSG against Lyon. Photograph: Aurelien Meunier/PSG via Getty Images
By then, Gérard Prêcheur, who twice won the Champions League as coach of Lyon, must have been wondering what he’d got himself in to when he agreed to replace Didier Olle-Nicolle as PSG coach in August. Ahead of Wednesday night’s Champions League game against Sweden’s Häcken, Prêcheur struggled to hide his exasperation in his press conference when the bulk of the questions focussed on Diallo and Hamraoui.