A former French star footballer who now directs FC Miami City’s soccer club was arrested Wednesday for smashing open a condominium apartment door, stealing a knife and spraying the apartment and a tenant with foam from a fire extinguisher.

Gregory ReneRobert Dutil, 37, was taken into custody while holding a cup of red wine and wearing only his boxer briefs and socks, Miami police said. He was booked into Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center and charged with armed burglary, burglary with assault or battery, two counts of criminal mischief, possession of coke and improperly using a fire extinguisher.

Police said just before handcuffing Dutil they noticed a bulge in the left side of his white briefs.

“The defendant then reached for the bulge at which point Officer Russell observed it to be a silver kitchen knife,” the arresting officer wrote in Dutil’s arrest form. “Officer Russell immediately confiscated the knife.”

Dutil, who now directs soccer in Miami began his professional career in the 1990s in France and played in that nation’s First and Second divisions before playing in Spain., according to his profile on the website for Miami FC, which is a semi-professional club in a developmental league. Dutil played on the French team Nimes Olympique during the 2011-2012 season, when it won its first French national title in over a decade.

Police said they were called to the Charter Club condominium at 600 NE 36th St. at about 9 a.m. Wednesday about vandalism and possible battery. When they arrived, Dutil’s arrest report says, the soccer player was sitting on a couch in the hallway wearing only his boxer briefs, socks and holding a cup of red wine.

After confiscating the knife, police said, they made contact with a woman in the apartment that Dutil is accused of breaking into. It was not clear from the arrest report if they knew each other. She told officers that he busted the door open, sprayed her in the face with foam from a fire extinguisher and went on to spray down much of the apartment.

The report says she ran to the balcony and screamed. When a security guard at the condo showed up, he told police that Dutil was still in the apartment. He said he managed to control Dutil and sit him down until police arrived. Police said the female tenant said that Dutil gotten the knife from her kitchen.

Police said the apartment floor was covered in red wine and once they searched Dutil they found suspected cocaine in his socks.

Dutil remained in jail Thursday afternoon. No bond had been set for the armed burglary and burglary with assault or battery charges. He could not be reached for comment and it was not immediately clear if he had retained an attorney.

A champion poker player from Sydney’s ritzy eastern suburbs has been charged over the death of a French UBEReats cyclist.

French national Julien Trameaux, 26, died late last year when his bike collided with a car at Double Bay.

Champion poker player Warwick Mirzikinian has been charged with dangerous driving occasioning death and negligent driving occasioning death.

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The 49-year-old Point Piper man, who lives near Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Australia’s most expensive suburb, was driving a Tesla electric car during the collision, which occurred shortly after 6pm on November 13.

Mirzikinian attended Rose Bay police station on Sunday and was issued with a future attendance notice to appear before a Downing Centre Local Court magistrate on April 18.

Mr Trameaux, who died at the scene of the crash, had worked as an UBEREats delivery cyclist at night after finishing his day shifts as a labourer.

Mr Mirzikinian is a renowned Australian poker player who has competed in a number high roller events.

He had been involved in the industry for almost 10 years and has amassed more than $640,000 in winnings. 

Mr Mirzikinian has collected nearly $100,000 this year at events at Star Sydney, the Nine Network said.  

He lives in a lavish four-bedroom home with his wife Kristy, who is a friend of PR queen Roxy Jacenko.

The death was the fifth cyclist fatality on NSW Roads in 2017, Transport NSW said.

Mr Mirzikinian’s wife last year made headlines when a sinkhole the size of a backyard swimming pool opened up outside their Point Piper home, cutting power and interrupting personal training sessions. 

‘My personal trainer has come, my electricity is off and now I don’t know what to do,’ said Ms Mirzikinian in her blue gym gear and clutching a Mercedes Benz umbrella.

Champion poker player Warwick Mirzikinian has been charged over the death of a French cyclist who was hit by a car in Sydney’s eastern suburbs late last year.

Julien Trameaux, 26, who was on a working visa in Australia, was riding his bike along New South Head Road at 6.30pm on November 13 when he was struck by a vehicle believed to be owned by Mr Mirzikinian, 49.

The businessman was driving near his luxury Point Piper home when the fatal collision occurred.

Mr Trameaux died at the scene and Mr Mirzikinian was taken to hospital for mandatory testing.

The 26-year-old worked six days a week as a labourer for Pimas Gale Construction and at night he was a delivery cyclist for UberEATS.

He had set himself a three-year plan to open a French patisserie in Sydney. 

“He was a legend of a person,” site manager Matt Bell told 9NEWS after the tragic incident.

Last year, Mr Mirzikinian won more than $95,000 at poker championship events at Star Sydney.

He is also a mobile phone entrepreneur and a former director of car stereo giant Strathfield. 

Yesterday, Mr Mirzikinian was charged with dangerous driving occasioning death and negligent driving occasion death.

He is due to appear at Downing Centre Local Court on April 18.

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One of rugby union’s more unusual books goes some way to explaining recent events in France. Guy Novès last week became the first national coach to be sacked and the French Rugby Federation is claiming “serious misconduct” by the 63-year-old amounted to a breach of contract which meant he was not entitled to compensation.

Alex Potter, an Englishman, and Georges Duthen, who was the rugby editor of L’Equipe, published The Rise of French Rugby in 1961, the year of the national side’s first tour to New Zealand. It was written in English and aimed at New Zealanders who were presumed to know little about rugby in a country that until winning the Five Nations outright for the first time in 1959 had been better known for what happened off the field there than on it.

“The fans have watched the French Revolution in the game, a revolution that came years after the soccer revolution Hungary led,” wrote Potter and Duthen. “It is progressive, exciting and enthusiastic. The French rugby player has a quality few British players possess: a Latin temperament that bubbles in gay adventure on the field.”

There has not been much adventure in recent years and the only bubbling has been of discontent. France may have taken nearly half a century to make an impact in the Five Nations and did not become a member of what is now World Rugby until 1978, ostracised by the home unions in the 1930s and thrown out of the championship after 10 clubs broke away from the FFR, and were not bothered by the letter of the amateur regulations, but their demise, along with South Africa’s slide, has weakened the international game.

The FFR is led by Bernard Laporte, the coach in the 2003 and 2007 World Cup campaigns that were both ended by England, the country on which he had modelled his side, cracking down on indiscipline and discouraging excitability and clashing with a number of club coaches, including Novès who was at Toulouse. One of Laporte’s assistants in the 2000s, Jacques Brunel, has taken over until the 2019 World Cup, raising questions about who will really be in charge.

There is more than a touch of irony in the accusation, part of the serious misconduct allegation, that Novès did not liaise enough with the Top 14 clubs, and not just because it is an approach for which Laporte was not known. Potter and Duthen, reflecting on the growth of French rugby in the 1920s when the number of clubs increased from 173 to 784, noted a difference in the way clubs and the national side were followed.

“The mass of fans loves the international games,” they wrote. “For the club championship, it has a passion.” It is this faultline that has been exposed more and more in the professional era. The national team do not sit at the top of French rugby’s pyramid and if that did not overly concern Laporte when he was coaching Toulon and in charge of a team who invariably had a majority of players unavailable to the national coach, it does now.

Sacking Novès is one thing, his record after taking over from Philippe Saint-André following the 2015 World Cup was poor, seven victories in a 21-Test reign that ended with a fortuitous draw against Japan in Paris in November, but trying to wriggle out of paying him and his two assistants compensation demeans the FFR.

If Novès, like Gareth Jenkins in Wales a decade before, appeared to be the right choice at the wrong time, appointed in the twilight of his club career rather than in its heyday, he was unable to make sense of a system that worked against him, even when the FFR finally agreed a deal on player release with the Top 14 clubs and a minimum number of France qualified players in national squads.

He tried, without much success, to restore France to the way they were before Laporte’s trench rather than French rugby but what used to come naturally has been squashed under dumb bells, medicine balls and outside influences. Les Bleus have faded into a light grey at the same time the Top 14 has become, financially at least, the leading league in the world with its 26 rounds before the play-off stage.

French rugby is known for its autocrats. Albert Ferrasse was the FFR’s president for 28 years from 1968 and was not known for his willingness to take no for an answer. He regularly clashed with players, steadfastly opposing those who advocated the end of amateurism, and Laporte is a figure in the same mould, prone to barking out orders.

He has taken on the Top 14 clubs, determined to drive down the number of foreign players in the league, having pledged there would be no more project players brought in to qualify on residence. “There will be fewer foreign players in clubs,” he said last year. “By 2020, only between five and seven will be allowed in match-day squads. The clubs say seven, I say five.”

Serge Blanco, the former France full-back turned administrator, said that conflict had been a staple of French rugby since professionalism was introduced in 1995. “I don’t think, however, it has reached such proportions before.” If the continued decline of the national team has led to a search for a solution, the two sides are following different paths.

Laporte has enough to grapple with without involving himself in the France team but the appointment of Brunel, who left Italy in an even worse state than he found them, leaves the rugby world to despair of a country where, in the words of Potter and Duthen, there was “magic in the handling of the ball, dazzling improvisation and brio, a delight to connoisseurs”. Novès failed to make old wine in new bottles quaffable and la vie is anything but rosé.

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