Girondins de Bordeaux: tombé en panne

They'd been suspended by a thread for a couple of weeks, and this week the thread snapped. Bordeaux, the club of Zidane, Tresor and Lizarazu, are dead.

When the bell finally tolled on Thursday afternoon for Girondins de Bordeaux, it sent a shockwave through the whole of European club football. This is one of French football’s great football institutions, resplendent in their distinctive navy blue shirts with a white chevron’ six times champions of France, not so long ago competitors in the Champions League. The club of Tresor, Battiston, Lizarazu, Domergue, Tigana, Dugarry and Zidane.

Following the collapse of a proposed takeover by Fenway Sports Group (FSG), the owners of Liverpool, Bordeaux initially effectively accepted relegation in the Championnat National 1, the French third tier, by withdrawing their appeal against a sanction issued against them a fortnight earlier. The club’s financial position had pushed Bordeaux into a position in which this was their only remaining option, and as with so many of these stories it didn’t come out of the blue. But that, it turned out, was merely a respite. Just days later, confirmation came through that the club will not be renewing its professional license for next season. Formed in 1881, Girondins de Bordeaux died in 2024.

The extent of the club’s issues had been evident for several years. The American hedge fund King Street bought the club in October 2018. What followed was a coming together of shambolic management and events beyond anybody’s control. The takeover of the club hadn’t exactly been smooth, with arguing behind the scenes while the team struggled to avoid relegation from Ligue 2.

But two other matters compounded the severity of the club’s position. Firstly, in March 2020 the pandemic struck and that critical source of regular income of matchday revenue was suddenly cut off. And in December of the same year came an even bigger blow with the collapse of Mediapro, the broadcaster who’d won the rights to Ligue 1 coverage a couple of years earlier in return for financial commitments that they ultimately could not meet.

As a hedge fund, King Street hadn’t bought Bordeaux to put money into the club. Unwilling the fund ballooning losses, King Street put the club into administration in April 2021, wiped their hands clean, and walked away from the flaming wreckage. Two months later Gérard López acquired the club, but the downward spiral continued and they were relegated from Ligue 1 at the end of the 2021/22 season.

The summer of 2022 would prove to foreshadow the events of this summer quite closely. In the middle of June, Bordeaux were demoted to the third tier Championnat National over their financial position, only for the club to win an appeal over a punishment that the club itself described as “brutal” after agreeing a debt reconstruction. On the pitch, the 2022/23 season brought an upswing in form, though defeats in their final two games of the season cost them a return to Ligue 1.

Last season brought a mid-table finish, and with the club’s financial continuing to deteriorate this summer brought a repeat of the summer of 2022, only without further restructuring being an option. The club were admiminstratively demoted on the 9th July, but even at this late stage in proceedings there was still cause to believe that they could escape.

That FSG might have been interested in Bordeaux wasn’t particularly surprising. This is, after all, a club with a history; one of its oldest and most decorated. It doesn’t take much imagination to be able to see the potential at this club, and clubs of this status don’t often find themselves in such a sorry state that they could be picked up for relative peanuts.

But even considering all of this, it seems that FSG couldn’t see how they could make this work, and while there is often a temptation to shake one’s fist at the ruthless capitalists when they don’t ‘rescue’ a beloved football club, it would also be understandable if they didn’t just want to throw money onto a tyre fire, as others have in recent years. Their decision not to proceed sealed Bordeaux’s fate. This time there would be no last-minute reprieve.

So, what comes next? The stadium, the Matmut Atlantique, was redeveloped for Euro 2016. It holds 42,000 people and it's municipally owned, though the council have been making noises about wanting to sell up for several years. Whether it represents an opportunity or not may depend on what they want for it. And a new club for Bordeaux will surely follow, though it will be too late for this season to come. At least the empty season will give time for preparation.

“How did it come to this?”, some may cry. How could it come to this? In short, the collapse of this club is a conflation of two branches of its corrosive addiction to money. On the one hand came the collapse of a disruptive broadcaster who moved quickly and broke things. On the other came the hedge funds. King Street got out, and just a couple of years later, with Lopez having proved himself as financially illiterate at Bordeaux as he had with his previous club Lille, all hopes had to be pinned on FSG, another hedge fund, albeit at least one with a demonstrable track record of successfully running clubs elsewhere. Until this cycle of dependency is broken, these stories will continue. With the fallout from the Mediapro collapse continuing to leave the whole of French football in a parlous state, more could follow. And one loss, especially such a storied name as Girondins de Bordeaux, is too many.