Anthony Lopes has been forced to apologise after fanning the flames of Lyon's bitter rivalry with St Etienne ahead of Sunday's derby.
In Lyon's Coupe de France defeat in Marseille on Tuesday, Lopes' shirt bore the No. 1 with the names of all the previous cup winners written into the numeral in celebration of the competition's 100th anniversary.
TV cameras caught that Lopes, who was born near Lyon, had blacked out with a marker pen the name of St Etienne, six-time Coupe de France winners and OL's hosts for Sunday's highly charged Rhone derby.
"I didn't think it was going to take on those proportions," Lopes told Le Progres after the vitriolic backlash. "It was just a nod towards the derby in the week leading up to it. I have heard and read things that have astounded me. You don't have any room for error on social media.
"There was nothing nasty about it. The rivalry between OL and ASSE [St Etienne] is out of the ordinary and the only ones to really understand it are the fans of both clubs. If I have hurt or insulted ASSE and its officials, I'm very sorry. That wasn't my intention."
St Etienne fans were already annoyed following an embarrassing U-turn over the loan deal that had brought Anthony Mounier to the club.
Mounier came through Lyon's youth academy, and though he only made 20 Ligue 1 appearances for the club before moving to Nice, his past came back to haunt him when he joined St Etienne on loan from Bologna late last month.
Even before his official unveiling last Friday, St Etienne fans had unfurled a large banner at the club's training ground that read "Mounier, our colours will never be yours."
Fans of Les Verts had not forgiven Mounier for yelling "I f--- Les Verts" to a television camera after scoring for Nice, while comments he made after a move to St Etienne fell through in the summer of 2015 had also caused controversy. The former Montpellier man has now joined Atalanta on loan instead.
"The president told me, 'We've met the supporters, we thought we could bring them round, but we had people who did not want to be reasoned with in front of us,'" Mounier told L'Equipe, relaying the events of a meeting he had with St Etienne president Roland Romeyer and coach Christophe Galtier last week.
"It was out of the question for some of them that I wear the green shirt. We needed an emergency solution. I had just two days to find another club. And I had turned clubs down to join Sainte..."
Asked whether he had received death threats, he said: "I didn't receive any personally, but some phrases were reported to me. It was more intimidation. They were real and they made me really afraid.
"One guy told the president he was married, with children, but that it wasn't a problem for him to beat me up if he saw me, and that he was ready to go to prison for five or six months, no problem! It went really far."
Mounier had asked to meet fans' groups himself to "calm things down" while St Etienne's reserve goalkeeper and club stalwart Jessy Moulin had talked to supporters in an attempt to pacify their anger.
"Even he wasn't listened to," Mounier added. "He asked the fans to at least give me a chance, to see if I put in the effort for the shirt. They didn't want to listen to any of it."