In 1994, the so called “Affaire OM-VA” was widely talked about in the media. This paper analyzes the case of the man who revealed the attempt to corrupt a few football players of the Valenciennes team by the managers of Olympique de Marseille. A particulary unruffled character, Jacques Glassmann was until then only an “anonymous” person in French football. Reluctantly, he then gained a strange national fame, as he gradually became a pariah within the football milieu, while the media developed an interest in his strange career.