The Girondins de Bordeaux will play part of their future on Saturday May 8 in Nantes. While there are three days of the French football championship to go, their maintenance in Ligue 1, the first professional division, is not yet fully assured. This match, against a club that is also struggling not to go down to the lower floor (Ligue 2), promises to be crucial.
But, beyond this questioning of its future at the sporting level, it is above all that of its very short survival that is currently agitating the club, as well as the political and economic circles of Gironde. On April 22, the main shareholder, US investment fund King Street, announced that it “No longer wished to support the club and finance its current and future needs”.
Since then, the Girondins have been placed under the protection of the Bordeaux commercial court. The ad hoc representative who has been appointed, Frédéric Abitbol, must, among other things, help Frédéric Longuépée, president of the club, to examine the possible solutions of takeover. Time is running out because if a project emerges, it will have to be finalized by mid-July.
Several declarations of intent have flourished since the withdrawal from King Street. If the sporting future will count in the file (a maintenance in Ligue 1 will not have the same weight as a relegation in Ligue 2), the financial aspect is not negligible: the future buyer will have to pay off a debt between 60 and 80 million euros, and repay in October 2022 a loan of 40 million euros.
If no takeover offer emerges, a reorganization, even a judicial liquidation could seal the fate of a club which has existed for one hundred and forty years, has been six times champion of France, and has seen famous players, such as Alain Giresse, Bixente Lizarazu or Zinedine Zidane.
“Real sports project” and “new mode of governance”
In this case, however, we must reckon with a major player: the supporters. More particularly the Ultramarines, who have been in direct opposition to the management of the club since 2018 and the takeover, initially by the Americans of GACP (General American Capital Partners) and King Street for 100 million euros, before King Street does not become the majority shareholder at the end of 2019.
“It’s been three years since the supporters have a very precise expertise of the situation and have been able to explain the dangers that awaited us. They were taken from high, little listened to, whereas this expertise was unfortunately verified beyond what they feared, and today it continues ”, laments Florian Brunet, the spokesperson for the Ultramarines.
You have 55.44% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.