The Doubiste club, twice champion of France, saw its relegation to N1 confirmed by the DNCG on Tuesday. He is inevitably headed for bankruptcy.
A historic club on the edge of the abyss. Downgraded to National 1 by the National Management Control Department (DNCG) on June 28, FC Sochaux-Montbéliard saw this sanction confirmed on appeal on Tuesday July 11. In question, a hole of several million euros in the coffers of the club, according to information from France 3 Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.
Sochaux still had a last resort to save his skin in Ligue 2, since the club could seize the CNOSF. The body had intervened to fish out, last summer, the Girondins de Bordeaux, also relegated to National. But the Sochaux leaders could not present the missing sum, conditional on the contribution of new funds by the Chinese majority shareholder Neking, before the DNCG.
As the Sochaux club regrets in its press release, the owner, victim of the collapse of the Chinese real estate market, did not provide these guarantees. The FCSM has certainly made up for part of its debt – initially 22 million euros – by parting with 19 players, but that was not enough to balance its accounts and prevent its fall.
Towards the abyss of French football
9th in the last Ligue 2 after having long been in the running for a rise in the elite, the Doubiste club has gone from nothing to nothing. Twice French champion (1935, 1938) and winner of two French Cups (1937, 2007), he long held the record for seasons played in Ligue 1 (66). This training club (the internationals Ibrahima Konaté or Marcus Thuram for the most recent), in L2 since 2014, is about to leave the professional world for the first time in its history.
The future could indeed be much lower for Sochaux, seriously threatened with bankruptcy. Without the arrival of a wealthy buyer quick to fill the coffers, the club will not be able to survive in the third division. “The National 1 model is a model without recipes“, explained to franceinfo: sport the economist Jean-Pascal Gayant, when Bordeaux was in such danger in the summer of 2022.
Officially non-professional, this division only offers very low television rights, while subjecting the clubs to very high costs, in particular salaries. Even if the agglomeration of Montbéliard has accepted a deferral of rent for the Bonal stadium, the cost of infrastructure also seems difficult to bear in N1.
Strasbourg and Bastia, examples to follow
In fact, if the FCSM goes out of business, it will certainly return to the lowest national level, in National 3 (5th division), as was the case for Strasbourg in 2011 or Bastia in 2017. These two examples represent, however, paradoxically, serious reasons for hope for the Sochaux supporters, gathered in numbers in the streets of Montbéliard on Saturday, in a futile last stand.
Racing and Sporting quickly emerged from the twists and turns of amateur football (Strasbourg returned to L2 in six years, Bastia in four years) in healthy financial situations. These two clubs, historic like Sochaux (Strasbourg won a title, Bastia played in the UEFA Cup final), “took advantage” of these setbacks to reconnect with local fiber, materialized by popular support and the arrival of local investors.
It was therefore not uncommon to come across several thousand supporters in National 2 at La Meinau or Furiani, and it is easy to imagine such attendance at Bonal, the den of the Cubs, where 12,000 spectators gathered on average This year. A possible takeover by local shareholders could allow the club to reconnect with its history, as when the club was under the ownership of Peugeot, but piloted since 2015 by investors based in China and disconnected from current Franche-Comté issues.