By being relegated to the fourth division, the Lorraine club should lose its professional status which it has had since 1967.
From Platini to the pillory. AS Nancy Lorraine, where the triple Ballon d’Or began in the 1970s and which was still playing in the European Cup 15 years ago, is relegated to National 2, raising fears about the future or even the club survival. This descent was formalized after the 3-3 draw at Bourg-en-Bresse, also relegated, on Friday May 26. The meeting was interrupted in added time due to firecrackers thrown on the lawn by ASNL supporters, but was finally able to go to an end.
Relegation should lead to the loss of the club’s professional status, a key which Nancy has had continuously since 1967 and which is only granted to teams in Ligue 1, Ligue 2 and those relegated to National for a maximum of two seasons. For the people of Lorraine, the consequences could be dramatic: closure of the training center – only professional clubs can use it – termination of player contracts, financial losses or even filing for bankruptcy could follow in the coming months, even if the club hopes always an administrative repechage in the event of a competitor’s financial bankruptcy.
The collapse is terrible for the biggest budget of the National, with 10 million euros, which had rebuilt its group from floor to ceiling in the offseason. The new shareholders who arrived in December 2020, investors grouped together in NewCity Capital, have only experienced setbacks. Among them, Chien Lee and Paul Conway, already shareholders of Nice, also failed at Barnsley last season, relegated to the English 3rd division, where they had been ousted from the board of directors. The departure of President Gauthier Ganaye, already briefly in charge in Nice, has been recorded since the end of April.
“Ghost investors, ghost president, they knocked it all downsighs the editor-in-chief of the webmedia of supporters of the club “Fans of Nancy”, Juliette Schang. They only wanted to make money, the club was just a toy for them, but today the toy is broken.”.
“The future is totally dark, we don’t know where the club will go, or even if there will still be a club tomorrow. For the last two home matches there were 16 and 19,000 spectators, Nancy is a football city“, she adds.
Memories of the UEFA Cup in 2006 and 2008 seem far away
The agony was long. After years of climbing between the first two floors of French football, Nancy left Ligue 1 for good at the end of the 2016/2017 season, which ended in 19th place. The club was unable to replay the climb immediately and vegetated at the bottom of the Ligue 2 table, and collapsed in 2022, finishing last. The descent from the 3rd to the 4th division will only have taken one season. Despite the arrival on the bench of ex-French international Benoit Pedretti in January, ASNL has never managed to raise the bar.
It was in Nancy that some big names in French football began, like Michel Platini, who spent seven seasons in Lorraine before flying to Saint-Étienne and then Juventus. The last period of glory dates back to the years of Pablo Correa (2002-2011), the coach who won the Coupe de la Ligue in 2006 and finished 4th in Ligue 1 in 2008, two performances which offered him qualification for the Coupe de la Ligue. UEFA. ASNL was then a solid Ligue 1 club, perfectly identified by football fans. It was fifteen years ago, an eternity. Anyone who gets into it gets a kick out of it, says the club’s motto. In a few years, he lost all his thorns.