LEAGUE 1 – In the midst of the financial crisis, French football offers a pathetic spectacle. There are those who draw the cover to them, those who point the crisis to cover their errors and those who dig their grave. To varying degrees, French football locomotives, or those that should be, may worry about their future in the short and medium term.
This weekend, Germany gave a lesson. A lesson in discipline. A lesson in rigor. Football has resumed, without a hitch so far. The Bundesliga clubs joined forces, set a course, gave direction and turned on a light at the end of a very long tunnel. France, it has extinguished it and it is under a thick mist that struggles with the energy of despair its locomotives looking like makeshift wagons. Ligue 1 looks bad. And the spectacle it has offered since the end of the proceedings is painful to see. Lyon, Bordeaux, Saint-Etienne, Monaco, Marseilles: the most buzzing names in the French championship, those who built its history, the most respectable institutions in France unscrew.
The crisis is, most of the time, an excuse. The evils are much deeper and the suspension of the debates only puts the finger where it hurts. It exacerbates their weaknesses. Of course, according to the club, the degree of concern varies but all of these monuments share a common point in this sequence: a major weakening (of their image, their economic power and / or their sporting ambition) and a pathetic spectacle.
League 1
“Enough!”: The mayor of Bordeaux whistles the end of recess
Noël Le Graët alongside Jean-Michel Aulas.
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Each for his apple
In Lyon, the crisis is primarily sporting since OL, 7th, ends at its worst ranking in 23 years. Jean-Michel Aulas, its president, has made us believe for several days now that he works for the collective good after having defended almost all possible scenarios to save his club (white season, ranking based on the last five seasons, a season spread over the calendar year and finally a recourse to ubiquitous playoffs).
A perpetual busyness symbol of the doctrine that guided the speaking of many French leaders before Noël Le Graët sounded the end of recess: the famous ‘each for his apple’. And even when the case is closed, Jean-Michel Aulas continues to gesticulate, unable to comply with the collective decision of an institution, the LFP not to name it, supposed to be authoritative. But French football is lacking, JMA is only interfering in the fault to make it even more gaping.
Even when everything is fine, everything is bad
Holes, OM accounts are not lacking and even when everything is going well in Marseille, everything can go wrong. After an exemplary season on the field, after having finally entered the nails of the Champions Project, OM is facing an institutional crisis. Jacques-Henri Eyraud may put on his vindicator clothes to pay off the club’s abysmal debts, it would be very dishonest to forget that it was his management with salaries and transfers above market prices which put OM in trouble.
Marseille harvests what its leaders have sown. Is the crisis widening the deficit? She has a good back. The OM had 60 million euros to find to close its accounts long before the Covid-19 put the world under cover. The only victorious French club in C1 is preparing to find the Champions League with a plummeted workforce, turned against its management and, without doubt, the orphan of a coach who had managed to unite his forces.
Monaco, Bordeaux and unreadable strategies
In Monaco too, the cleaning promises to be spectacular. Entangled in a policy of “trading” which no longer makes sense in the midst of an economic crisis, weakened by results which sanction a sports policy that has become illegible, the ASM has twice as many players under contract (60!) For a team deprived of Europe next year. It will therefore be necessary to bail out in a context that will not stimulate business. Monaco is taken at its own game, the third budget of Ligue 1 will have a hard time overcoming the burden of its numerous investments and the salaries of a plethoric and frumpy workforce. Dimitri Rybolovlev no longer wants to feed the accounts: the future of Monaco, drained financially, looks uncertain.
AS Monaco recruits presented to Louis-II on August 21, 2019.
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That of AS Saint-Etienne is hardly more radiant. Its budget does not correspond to its place at the end of the season (17th) and for the first time in 9 years, the Greens will finish an exercise in the red. The big salaries (M’Vila, Debuchy, Khazri, Boudebouz) and the repayment of a loan contracted in 2018 lead to already precarious accounts and dissension within the club between Claude Puel and a good part of his executives, at image of Stéphane Ruffier, only weakens the institution. The Greens have escaped from Ligue 2, will they escape an implosion this summer? Nothing is less sure.
Owner / supporters divorce
This is already the case in Bordeaux where the divorce between the supporters and King Street, the American investment management company which owns the Girondins, has been signed. Recordings of meetings between the Ultra Marines and certain Bordeaux leaders have leaked and discredit the image of the club with six titles of champion of France. The Girondins, who lost 55 million euros in their last financial year, are not profitable and no one knows the real intentions of the American investment fund.
As in Monaco, unreadable sports policy returns, in these times of crisis, like a boomerang at the head of Bordeaux leaders. This troubled period highlights in a thick line the strategic inconsistencies, the bad decisions and the errors of management of the great monuments of Ligue 1. Some are doing much better, fortunately. But the showcase of French football looks very bad.
League 1
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League 1