Each generation is confronted with its tragedies and has to find the strength to rebuild to keep moving forward. Regardless of one’s age, we all remember 14 July 2016. It should have a been a great celebration. It was an immense tragedy. Terrifying. A crazy lorry on the Promenade des anglais. 86 victims. Hundreds of lives shattered and destinies to be rebuilt.

Ten years ago, part of Nice died, changed our way of life and transformed a national celebration into an eternal catastrophe. Despite that, ten years on, that part of Nice is still there. In our heads. In the 86 names that form our heart.

OGC Nice sprang into action in the first few minutes. It hasn’t stopped since. Everyone remembers the Allianz Riviera decked out in white against Rennes, a month after the attack. The balloons that floated from the pitch to the sky. The players coming onto the pitch amid a heartbreaking silence. The tears. The face of Malang Sarr. The heart on the players’ shirts, on the training centre, on the giant screens. The auctions to benefit the victims’ associations.

For the last ten years, the bond with those associations has not been broken. The grieving is now shared by the whole of France and even beyond its borders, because each time the Aiglons step onto the pitch, every 86th minute, the lights go on for our dear departed. And each 86th minute reopens the wounds that never heal.

This 14 July 2026, an entire country will pay tribute to the victims of terrorism, and have in mind those other Niçois whose lives have been taken by this same barbarism in recent years: Hervé Gourdel in Algeria, Corinne and Anne Dechauffour in Kenya, Nadine Devillers, Vincent Loquès and Simone Barreto Silva in our own, dear Notre-Dame Basilica.

This national remembrance service launches the 2026-27 season, which will be one of tribute. After Sunday’s march, the training sessions of Olivier Pantaloni’s players and those at the Youth Academy will be preceded by a minute’s silence. On Thursday, they will all go and lay a wreath at Villa Masséna.

This season, the heart made up of the 86 names of the victims will be printed on the Aiglons’ shirts, the captain’s armband of all the club’s teams, and on all means of communication. The third kit has been entirely conceived as a tribute to the victims. The Aiglons will wear it for the first time in public against Le Mans in a game which will be dedicated to the memory of the victims of the attack.

That will be the common thread running through our season, because even if time continues its march forward, we will never forget.

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