FC Sochaux-Montbéliard, historic club of French football, on the edge of the abyss

2023-07-11 08:00:04
During a Ligue 2 match between FC Sochaux and Créteil, on April 10, 2015, at the Stade Auguste-Bonal, in Montbéliard (Doubs). SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP

At FC Sochaux-Montbéliard (FCSM), everyone holds their breath. The Ligue 2 club must go before the national management control department (DNCG) on Tuesday, July 11, to find out what its future will be like. On June 28, the financial “gendarme” of French football administratively downgraded Sochaux to National 1, the third division, after having revoked its budget for next season.

Read also: Football: FC Sochaux relegated to National, Bordeaux maintained in Ligue 2

Owned by the Chinese group Nenking, the Doubs club justified itself in a press release, before appealing: “The delay in the payment of these funds, which motivated the sanction of the DNCG, is explained by the cash flow difficulties encountered by Nenking in its activities linked to a Chinese real estate market in crisis since the health crisis. » The deficit, amounting to 22 million euros, is in fact a risky bet.

“The decision of the DNCG is a half-surprise, explains Rémi Farge, journalist for The Republican Eastwhich covers club news. To simplify, the leaders went all-in to move up to Ligue 1. ” Relegated in 2014, the FSCM aimed to return to the top flight during the 2022-2023 season, to the point of paying several players handsomely, sometimes at the same level as Ligue 1. Except that the club only finished the season in 9ᵉ place in the Ligue 2 championship.

First French training center

Sochaux leaders have sought to make up the shortfall in recent days. Since June 28, nearly twenty players have left the ship. To prevent it from sinking, Samuel Laurent flew to China at the end of last week to meet the shareholders there. The general manager of FCSM – the main target of supporters who criticize the club’s lifestyle – had already convinced Nenking to reinject 10 million euros in 2022 before going before the DNCG.

Nothing says that the Chinese group will this time get back to the pot. “We have to save FC Sochaux. It is a piece of French football heritage that is in danger., alert Mecha Bazdarevic, former player and coach of the club. The latter has been wavering since the disengagement, in 2015, of Peugeot, with whom the FCSM has been intimately linked for a very long time.

Read also: End of the story between Peugeot and FC Sochaux

In 1928, Maurice Bailly and Louis-Maillard Salin, two workers from the car manufacturer’s factory in Sochaux, founded the club. With the support of the director, Jean-Pierre Peugeot, the FCSM becomes the first club to professionalize in France, before participating directly in the foundation of the French championship, which it will win twice, in 1935 and 1938. Sochaux inaugurates the first French training center in the 1970s, from which illustrious players will emerge, always under the impetus of Peugeot.

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