After the final relegation of FC Sochaux to National, the suspended future of a monument of French football

Saturday August 5, the spans of the Auguste-Bonal stadium in Montbéliard will remain sadly deserted. FC Sochaux-Montbéliard (FCSM), which was to host Guingamp for the first day of the Ligue 2 championship, is definitively relegated. And never has filing for bankruptcy pure and simple seemed so close for this historic club, one of the monuments of French football.

The administrative court of Paris has indeed rejected, Thursday, August 3, the request for reinstatement of the club in the second division. In the process, the businessman Romain Peugeot announced that he would give up the takeover of the club, the only solution to prevent him from plummeting to the lower levels of the championship.

For several weeks, this potential buyer, great-grandson of the founders, had been engaged in a battle to try to save the Doubs club from defeat. This appeal to justice was his last shot. He had failed on Tuesday in his attempt to have the French National Olympic and Sports Committee cancel the decision of the national management control department to demote the club, in the grip of significant financial difficulties, to National.

According to his lawyer, Laurent Cotret, Mr. Peugeot, supported by several local authorities, nevertheless had the funds – 8.5 million euros – necessary according to him to clean up the financial situation of the club. The group of investors surrounding the takeover candidate “can only regret that his project funded in full (…) not be taken into account, despite the documents provided demonstrating this”. And to add: “The solution we proposed is only viable in the Ligue 2 championship”in particular because the amounts of television rights collected by the National clubs are very much lower than those of the L2.

The ball is now in the court of the current owner of the club, the real estate group Nenking, in great financial difficulty because of the real estate crisis in his country, China.

The nearly century-old club, 9^e of Ligue 2 at the end of a last exercise which he spent a long time at the forefront, could file for bankruptcy. The hypothesis is now seen as “inevitable” by Florian Bouquet, president of the departmental council of the Territory of Belfort: “It is a blow for the employees and the supporters, as well as for the communities and the partners of the club. »

A possible disappearance of the training center

This prospect could also lead the club to evolve even lower, in National 3 (fifth division), or even below. THE “fight” now must be “to play in the days to come in National 1”judged with AFP the deputy of Doubs Nicolas Pacquot (Renaissance), judging the National 3 as a “doomsday scenario” both for the economy and for the territory.

This additional relegation could lead to the disappearance of its training center (from the ranks of which, for example, the French internationals Ibrahima Konaté and Marcus Thuram recently emerged) and above all to precipitate the 150 employees of the club into unemployment.

Sochaux is a historic land of French football: founded in 1928 in one of the industrial strongholds of the country, it was intrinsically associated with the car manufacturer Peugeot, remaining in the family for almost ninety years until its sale. in 2015. He was one of the founders of the first professional French championship, in 1932. Twice champion of France (in 1935 and in 1938), he also won the Coupe de France twice (1937 and 2007) as well as the Coupe de la Ligue in 2004.

The relegation of the FCSM makes at least one happy: the Annecy club – 17^e and relegated at the end of the 2022-2023 financial year – was finally drafted into the second division, whose first matches are scheduled for Saturday August 5. Rather than at the Auguste-Bonal stadium, between Vosges and Jura, it is therefore in the Alps that Guingamp footballers will begin the season on Saturday.