What Bordeaux’s slow and painful demise and Troyes’ relief tells us about multiclub ownership in France

This week has seen the tragically inevitable demise of Girondins de Bordeaux come to fruition with the six-time French champions essentially opting out of professional soccer because of the financial black hole that Les Girondins has become after years of disastrous foreign ownership. FCGB’s slide on the field had started before the 2018 sale of the club to General American Capital Partners (GACP) by French media group M6 but the six years since the ill-fated arrival of group Joseph DaGrosa’s group followed by King Street and Fortress have led this once great club into financial oblivion.

Gerard Lopez’s arrival three years into those six only served to expedite what has already felt like a slow and agonizing death for those who love Bordeaux but this week saw it come to its unavoidable conclusion — the closure of one of France’s top youth academies and the release of all players from their contracts. Next week will see the Southwestern giants go to commercial court in an effort to erase much of its enormous debt having already accepted administrative relegation to the semiprofessional third tier of French soccer although there is no guarantee that this is as low as it could get.

Rescue had looked close in recent weeks in the form of Liverpool’s ownership group Fenway Sports Group (FSG) which also owns the Boston Red Sox of Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Pittsburgh Penguins franchise. However, FSG could not strike a financially viable deal given FCGB’s enormous debts — notably relating to the costly Matmut Atlantique stadium which opened in 2015 — at a time when professional French soccer has suffered an almighty existential crisis relating to lower than expected television rights money in a lengthy crisis dating back to COVID-19.

Lost in the sadness at Bordeaux’s situation may well have been the fact that the club that will replace the four-time Coupe de France winners in Ligue 2 is none other than City Football Group-owned ES Troyes Aube Champagne. ESTAC had been relegated out of the fully professional top two tiers of French soccer on the field this past season but FSG’s inability to make sense of the horrific state in which FCGB had been left meant that Troyes received an ill-merited administrative reprieve and a ticket out of the brutal Championnat National which now becomes Bordeaux’s best-case scenario.

The emotional elevator that has seen these two clubs switch places in recent days captures in a microcosm what has happened to French soccer over the past few years: it has essentially become a breeding and testing ground for elite clubs from stronger leagues than Ligue 1 because of its phenomenal ability to produce top talent. Multiclub ownership (MCO) has become rife because of a desire to tap into that seemingly bottomless well of brilliant soccer players and Manchester City’s signing of Savinho from ESTAC for nearly $40 million this summer illustrates that well despite his breakthrough coming with another CFG club — La Liga’s Girona FC.

Most Ligue 1 or Ligue 2 clubs with the best academies in France cannot hope to pocket that sort of money for their top talents yet Troyes managed to do so, at least on paper, after relegation to the third tier of the French pyramid as part of CFG’s multiclub setup. Although it is a high-profile example of how the system functions, it is far from the only example in France with a staggering number of clubs either part of MCOs or owned by an individual who has more than one club to their name already. Bordeaux’s Lopez already pushed Lille OSC close to the abyss having run Mouscron in Belgium into the ground with Boavista in Portugal going the same way.

Olympique Lyonnais, another French giant like Les Girondins, are the biggest club in John Textor’s Eagle Football Group portfolio while INEOS own OGC Nice despite having acquired a minority stake in Manchester United through Sir Jim Ratcliffe. RC Strasbourg Alsace share the same BlueCo ownership group as Chelsea and effectively function as the Blues’ satellite club to the disgust of their loyal fans and Toulouse have seen RedBird upgrade to Milan since their acquisition of the French outfit in Ligue 2 less than five years ago.

That is only the topflight clubs with the second tier housing Oaktree’s SM Caen in addition to Inter, Bill Foley’s FC Lorient which is now expected to be subservient to Bournemouth in the Premier League and multiclub owner Ahmet Schaefer’s Clermont Foot 63 with the latter two only just relegated from Ligue 1. There is also a new and controversial addition to the second tier in the form of 777-owned Red Star who are arguably the best performing club in the portfolio of the group which came close to acquiring Everton before it spectacularly fell apart and has plunged the Toffees into an existential crisis not dissimilar to that of Bordeaux with mounting debts and a costly new stadium.

On paper at least, FCGB will be in the third tier of French soccer this coming season and there are even multiclub properties at that level with AS Nancy Lorraine still part-owned by Chien Lee of New City Capital who initially bought the club with Paul Conway’s Pacific Media Group along as well as other clubs including Barnsley in England and Oostende in Belgium. The latter, like Lopez’s Mouscron, has been liquidated while Conway has been forced out of many of his disastrous involvements with these clubs including Nancy which came very close to going out of business after dropping out of the professional realm. Southampton owners Sport Republic also picked up Valenciennes alongside Goztepe SK with VAFC dropping into the third tier one year into new ownership as the Saints rose back to the EPL.

All of these multiclub variations have met with differing degrees of success but none of them have worked particularly well so far with little obvious value to many of the agreements with the exception of player trading. Bordeaux is joining — at least for now — the likes of Nancy and FC Sochaux Montbeliard is almost going out of business and taking shelter in the third tier of French soccer. Who could be next? Given how close other recognized names such as FC Nantes and Montpellier HSC have flown close to danger in recent years, Les Girondins will not be the last of the financial bloodshed that we see in France which speaks volumes about the state of the modern European club game.