From young SME boss to emblematic president of OL, Jean-Michel Aulas the tireless builder

Five months after the sale of Olympique Lyonnais to American millionaire John Textor on December 19, Jean-Michel Aulas left his post as CEO of the Rhone clubafter 36 years at the helm, the club announced on Monday May 8. Jean-Michel Aulas, 74, was to remain executive chairman for a three-year contract after the takeover of OL. However, differences of opinion as to the sports policy to be pursued quickly appeared between Jean-Michel Aulas and the team of the American investor.

If he will be named Honorary President, the one nicknamed “JMA”, leaves behind him more than a club. OL is the baby of Aulas. The entrepreneur has made a structure riddled with debt, languishing in the second division, a stronghold of French football, triumphant in the 2000s, which today counts on the European scene.

The story of Jean-Michel Aulas at Olympique Lyonnais is somewhere between serendipity and the art of the opposite. In the 1980s, he was just a young boss of a local SME, specializing in management software. It is this business suit that opens the doors to the world of sport for him, with an all-appointed chaperone, named Bernard Tapie.

Between “My little business” and “The man in a hurry”

The pure Rhodanien is not of the football seraglio. For a time, he hoped to make a career in handball. But he was ambitious as soon as he arrived in his new position in June 1987: he wanted to discover Europe in three seasons. He will only need one more to reach his goal, after coming up from D2.

“It made people smile because in football, you have the right to be ambitious, but you don’t have the right to make too many mistakes because you attract sarcasm, jealousy, he mentioned on the Téléfoot program on June 19. I arrived and I didn’t have the track record that allowed me to be credible. It had to be built.”

For this, Aulas imposes a revolution in French football and contributes to tipping it into the era of football-business. The president of OL structures his club as he structures his companies, step by step. He diversified the income generated by Lyon, created a holding company to manage its operations before listing it on the stock exchange in February 2007. Then, he became the owner of his stadium with private funds, a rarity in France.

“I wanted to recall the primacy of the economy over the sporthe exhibited in 2005 in a portrait drawn by Release. To have the best team, you need a strong corporate structure. I took the risk of expressing it.”

The leader goes much further than being the guarantor of the club’s account book. You are not born the child of a math teacher without keeping some traces of it. He is also the director of its sporting line of conduct, held in an iron fist with his right arm and lifelong “advisor”, Bernard Lacombe.

Jean-Michel Aulas is a man of projects, who likes to surround himself with loyal allies over the long term. It is also with this course that his vision of sports management is built: to be efficient yes, but also to make a profit to make the institution viable and sustainable.

The hegemony of the 2000s

This entrepreneurial management of football raises some teeth, but it works. OL became a club that mattered in the 1990s, and gave itself the means – notably those of the Pathé group – to become a winning entity in the following decade.

Investments in the transfer market are targeted, like the signing of Brazilian striker Sonny Anderson in June 1999. The arrival of the Brazilian, a former star of OM or Monaco who passed through FC Barcelona, ​​raised the Olympique Lyonnais to new heights. Jean-Michel Aulas’ title dream has come true. And seven times in a row, between 2002 and 2008, a prize list to which is added a Coupe de France in 2008.

With a backbone of French players or Ligue 1 regulars, and the very good finds of its recruitment unit in Brazil (Juninho, Caçapa, Cris, etc.), Lyon is establishing itself as the new boss of French football, “JMA” as a of its most essential characters.

To continue to be part of the gratin without spending millions on everything, Jean-Michel Aulas relies on the local network to find the young talents of tomorrow. The Lyon training center has become the national reference and one of the most important in Europe: from Sidney Govou to Rayan Cherki, via the golden generation Karim Benzema-Hatem Ben Arfa, or even that of Nabil Fekir, Samuel Umtiti and Corentin Tolisso …

Many are those who make their ranges in Tola Vologe, then in the new brand new center located in Décines, next to the Groupama Stadium. A good way there too to ensure the future of the club and its cash drawer, with significant sales.

Communication, women’s section: Aulas, heart of Lyon

This savings policy and the emergence of new powers in Ligue 1, thanks to the contribution of foreign capital, has pushed Lyon back in the hierarchy and distanced it from its dream of Europe. After being stuck at the gates of the Champions League final in 2010, then (to everyone’s surprise) in 2020, the Rhone club has just completed a third season without participating in the C1.

But, at the same time, Jean-Michel Aulas was a forerunner by investing financially and personally in his women’s team. Same recipes, even greater consequences. His OL have become a model of domination, the best on the national scene, winning 15 of the last 16 French league titles, and on the continental scene, a record eight Champions League titles since 2011, including the latest edition (2022).

And when things go less well, Jean-Michel Aulas does not flee the field. Beware of anyone who wants to touch the OL institution. It is he, in person, who has got into the habit of stepping up to the plate, playing very (sometimes too) offensive, even if it means embodying the lightning rods.

His statements against arbitration, his projections on Twitter, or even his punchlines against the hated neighbor Saint-Etienne, against journalists or even the state of the lawn… Everything is an excuse to express his fierce hatred of defeat. “Sometimes, I forced the line to be listened to and heard, but it is also true that I do not calculate. When I have the intimate conviction that something must be done, I am able to defend my players and players”, he confided to Téléfoot on June 19.

In 2021, his fierce desire to see Ligue 1 resume after the break forced by Covid-19 and confinement, when his club found itself 7th and deprived of European cups, had ended up irritating a large part of French football. .

“In football, we have our Líder máximo, ready to pounce on a devastating virus to overshadow his club’s difficult season in Ligue 1, published Jacques-Henri Eyraud, then president of Olympique de Marseille, in a column at the JDD, referring to the former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. We know Jean-Michel Aulas’ obsessive desire to defend OL by all means.”

This is another facet – which has more than once tended to annoy the world of French football – of his passionate love, his very fusion with OL, sometimes beyond common sense. At 74, Jean-Michel Aulas hands over, for good this time, and after having led him safely for so many years.