The club, monument of French football, must go back to the DNCG on Thursday. The financial policeman of French football has administratively relegated the club to the third division, because of a projected deficit of 21 million euros. Supporters now fear that their club will disappear.
A whole region holds its breath: the supporters of Football Club Sochaux-Montbéliard (or FCSM) will soon know more about the future of their club. The FCSM returns on Thursday July 20 to the DNCG. Sochaux, 9th in league 2 last season, was administratively demoted to National 1 (the third division) by the financial policeman of French football due to a projected deficit of 21 million euros in the budget.
The club’s Chinese owner, the Nenking real estate group, is ready to sell the club for 12 million euros, reports Nicolas Pacquot, Renaissance deputy for Doubs, in a press release.
“It’s getting unbearable”
Doubist supporters are worried about their club, twice champion of France (1935, 1938). They fear seeing him simply disappear from the professional world. “It becomes unbearable“, whispers Pascal, 63, fan of the Cubs, when Jean-Charles, his 32-year-old son slips: “Every quarter of an hour, every twenty minutes, I check to see if there’s anything new“.
Supporting the FCSM is a passion that is passed down from generation to generation, starting with the Peugeot factory that houses the stadium. “I really became a supporter at the age of 13, in 1973 and I worked at Peugeot from 1979 to 2020“, says Pascal, who went there with his father, and then brought back his son “in the pram“.
Peugeot sold the club in 2015.”too popular“for the car brand that decides to sell it to Chinese investors. The first goes bankrupt, the other manages the club’s finances very badly.”I’m angry, sad too, but mostly angrylaunches Pascal who recalls “that we are the club that launched professionalism, and we will disappear! We don’t have the right, we don’t have the right!“His son Jean-Charles is not very optimistic.”I think we’re slowly getting used to the ideaadmits this fan, but we don’t want to believe it yet“.
12 million euros to save the FCSM
Now, time is running out: supporters, residents and elected officials are therefore trying by all means to find a buyer who will be willing to pay 12 million euros. Nicolas Pacquot, Renaisance MP for the constituency, hopes that a solution will be found.
“Beyond all the affective and emotional part around a football club, it is also a company that risks laying off tomorrow and that is never good news for a territory”.
Nicolas Pacquot, MP for the constituencyat franceinfo
“We are in resistance”
150 employees work for the club, and the training center, very famous, is also at risk of disappearing, which worries young people, parents and educators. The deputy Nicolas Pacquot therefore asked Olivier Becht, the minister in charge of foreign trade “to save jobs, a historic club, I think a minister is not too much“, except that now many supporters want to have their say. Cédric Lagler is one of them.
In front of the Bonal stadium, the enclosure of the Cubs, he shows the portrait of Auguste Bonal, “symbol of the Resistance, unfortunately the resistance, we have been there for a few years now“, blows this fan. The “Sociochaux” association of which he is a member proposes to make the club a cooperative society, where the “socios”, the supporters, would have shares in the club and could “sit on the Board by bringing this regional anchoring and this dialogue that have been lacking“.
Proof that the supporters do not let go of their club in the storm, they were nearly 3,000 on July 14 in the stands of Bonal, mobilized to prevent the FCSM from sinking definitively. “Sochaux, it’s us”, recalls an inscription on the walls of the stadium.