Ligue 1
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JerseyAddict
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QSG cashing in another League...
Bulgroz
Senior Member
Bordeaux is going through some pretty terrifying changes this season.
The club has been owned for almost 20 years by a television channel (M6), with a very safe (probably too safe) management. They bought the team because they wanted to invest in football, they felt it could help them to get TV rights afterwards (they barely bought anything, except some NT games and EL rights a few seasons). We rose to moderate european level in 2008/2009 when we managed to win the league, and score a pretty nice CL campaign afterwards, beating Bayern (who ended up winning it) twice in groupe stage, as well as Juventus (we unfortunately lost to Lyon in quarter finals). But the past 10 years have been a struggle, with the team being able to qualify for Europa League pretty often only to play horribly against mediocre teams. So when it was announced that the club was going to be sold because M6 was losing money every year (they still managed to sell the team for 100 million euros, after buying it 20 millions in 1999), everybody was curious and pretty thrilled.
Not everything seems as peachy now though.
The buyer is called GAPC, it's a trust fund whose CEO is Joe DaGrosa (who became rich by buying failing Burger King restaurants in the US and flipping them for a very nice profit). Rumor has it that he might use Bordeaux to buy players under contract with one of his companies which operates as a talent agency. It's all fine if the players are good, but it might mean that between two different players, the choice might depend on who's representing him, and not on his qualities. It's mostly rumors though, but it's still a bit frightening.
Right now, the main problem is completely different: the sale will only be effective in november. So M6 is still managing the club, but they're not necessarily eager to spend money to buy players. And even if they want to, they have to run their options through the future owner. Needless to say, it's a huge mess.
And that brings us to the latest news in what is starting to look more and more like a HBO show. Last January we sacked Jocelyn Gourvennec (head coach) because the team was having awful results. Talks about the sale had already started, but nothing was official. Apparently, GAPC pushed for Gustavo Poyet, and M6 agreed. He was appointed, and even though the team still played pretty bad football, we managed to clim from the 15th to the 6th place, securing a spot in EL qualifying rounds. Quite an impressive feat from Poyet. We then sold Malcom for a very decent amount of money and bought... barely nobody. Poyet had to start the season in Europa League qualification rounds without any new recruit. He said a couple times in front of the press that he was a bit pissed off, without being too rude about it.
https://streamable.com/9cb0g
But then, there was yesterday. Bordeaux sold Gaetan Laborde (a very average player, but one of our only striker) for 5 millions. It was obvious it was going to happen, everybody knew it, it was only a matter of when. But apparently, nobody told Poyet that the deal was happening this thursday. Laborde was in the group for yesterday's game in EL against Mariupol, but he didn't show up at the hotel. When Poyet called him, he learned that the player was in Montpellier to sign his contract with his new team. After the game (2-1 win), Poyet appeared in front of the press, and didn't even talk about the game. He went on a 10 minutes rant about this utter lack of respect, talking about the club's president and/or director of football in pretty harsh words. He also said he might quit, considering the situation.
The next day (today) he was sacked. Well, actually, french law says that you have to summon your employee to an official interview, temporarily place him out of business for a week, and then you can sack him (it's not as simple, but basically it's something like that). So he'll be sacked officially next friday. Unless the future owner comes in and ask M6 to keep Poyet. Pretty unlikely, but you never know.
So now we're left without any coach, with a Ligue 1 game this sunday (we lost our first game last week at home against Strasbourg...), and EL playoff first leg on thursday. And we still don't have any decent striker (Pedro from fluminense has been mentioned quite a few times, but I'd be very surprised if we sign him now).
Apparently the new owner is considering Thierry Henry or Jurgen Klinsmann to replace Poyet. That would be suicidal for any of those two to come to Bordeaux now. The team looks terrible, the whole thing is a mess, and they wouldn't have a whole pre-season to start things off slowly.
Fun times.
(needless to say, Sergi Palencia came to Bordeaux at a pretty bad time).
The club has been owned for almost 20 years by a television channel (M6), with a very safe (probably too safe) management. They bought the team because they wanted to invest in football, they felt it could help them to get TV rights afterwards (they barely bought anything, except some NT games and EL rights a few seasons). We rose to moderate european level in 2008/2009 when we managed to win the league, and score a pretty nice CL campaign afterwards, beating Bayern (who ended up winning it) twice in groupe stage, as well as Juventus (we unfortunately lost to Lyon in quarter finals). But the past 10 years have been a struggle, with the team being able to qualify for Europa League pretty often only to play horribly against mediocre teams. So when it was announced that the club was going to be sold because M6 was losing money every year (they still managed to sell the team for 100 million euros, after buying it 20 millions in 1999), everybody was curious and pretty thrilled.
Not everything seems as peachy now though.
The buyer is called GAPC, it's a trust fund whose CEO is Joe DaGrosa (who became rich by buying failing Burger King restaurants in the US and flipping them for a very nice profit). Rumor has it that he might use Bordeaux to buy players under contract with one of his companies which operates as a talent agency. It's all fine if the players are good, but it might mean that between two different players, the choice might depend on who's representing him, and not on his qualities. It's mostly rumors though, but it's still a bit frightening.
Right now, the main problem is completely different: the sale will only be effective in november. So M6 is still managing the club, but they're not necessarily eager to spend money to buy players. And even if they want to, they have to run their options through the future owner. Needless to say, it's a huge mess.
And that brings us to the latest news in what is starting to look more and more like a HBO show. Last January we sacked Jocelyn Gourvennec (head coach) because the team was having awful results. Talks about the sale had already started, but nothing was official. Apparently, GAPC pushed for Gustavo Poyet, and M6 agreed. He was appointed, and even though the team still played pretty bad football, we managed to clim from the 15th to the 6th place, securing a spot in EL qualifying rounds. Quite an impressive feat from Poyet. We then sold Malcom for a very decent amount of money and bought... barely nobody. Poyet had to start the season in Europa League qualification rounds without any new recruit. He said a couple times in front of the press that he was a bit pissed off, without being too rude about it.
https://streamable.com/9cb0g
But then, there was yesterday. Bordeaux sold Gaetan Laborde (a very average player, but one of our only striker) for 5 millions. It was obvious it was going to happen, everybody knew it, it was only a matter of when. But apparently, nobody told Poyet that the deal was happening this thursday. Laborde was in the group for yesterday's game in EL against Mariupol, but he didn't show up at the hotel. When Poyet called him, he learned that the player was in Montpellier to sign his contract with his new team. After the game (2-1 win), Poyet appeared in front of the press, and didn't even talk about the game. He went on a 10 minutes rant about this utter lack of respect, talking about the club's president and/or director of football in pretty harsh words. He also said he might quit, considering the situation.
The next day (today) he was sacked. Well, actually, french law says that you have to summon your employee to an official interview, temporarily place him out of business for a week, and then you can sack him (it's not as simple, but basically it's something like that). So he'll be sacked officially next friday. Unless the future owner comes in and ask M6 to keep Poyet. Pretty unlikely, but you never know.
So now we're left without any coach, with a Ligue 1 game this sunday (we lost our first game last week at home against Strasbourg...), and EL playoff first leg on thursday. And we still don't have any decent striker (Pedro from fluminense has been mentioned quite a few times, but I'd be very surprised if we sign him now).
Apparently the new owner is considering Thierry Henry or Jurgen Klinsmann to replace Poyet. That would be suicidal for any of those two to come to Bordeaux now. The team looks terrible, the whole thing is a mess, and they wouldn't have a whole pre-season to start things off slowly.
Fun times.
(needless to say, Sergi Palencia came to Bordeaux at a pretty bad time).
Jair Ventura
New member
[youtube]w8vcihZjBnc[/youtube]
[youtube]ceMfnQq95uA[/youtube]
[youtube]bs0dub2OPfE[/youtube]
Ligue 1 today reminds me of La Liga in the early 00's before the competition took off and began dominating Europe. I don't expect Ligue 1 to reach the heights Spanish football has, but the championship is in a very good place and is showing clear sustained growth from top to bottom. Between the strength of the French system, the talent pool French clubs pull from, the quality of French stadiums, and the leagues new television rights deal with Mediapro-- I only see things improving from here.
To give you an example of what I'm talking about. Today I watched Nîmes Olympique versus Marseille. Marseille is a very good team that finished 4th in the league and reached the Europa league final. Nîmes was promoted from Ligue 2 where they finished 2nd behind Reims. Today was their first time playing in the French top flight in over 25 years. Normally you would expect their to be a gulf in class between a top 4 team and a club that was promoted. You often see newly promoted clubs park the bus and play the counter to avoid embarrassing results, but that isn't what I saw today. Nîmes took it to Marseille. They fought hard and were full of quality players I'd never heard of: Denis Bouanga, Sada Thioub, Umut Bozok, and Renaud Ripart. They were playing one and two touch passes, breaking lines with great runs or well played through balls, etc. It was a pleasant surprise.
And therein lies the beauty of Ligue 1. There are great talents and hidden gems everywhere, even as low as the second division. A few years ago it was N'Golo Kante and Thomas Lemar performing magic for newly promoted Caen, last year it was N'Dombele and Ismaila Sarr, and now there is a new group of players making names for themselves. It isn't La Liga or the EPL, but it's a fun competition nonetheless.
[youtube]ceMfnQq95uA[/youtube]
[youtube]bs0dub2OPfE[/youtube]
Ligue 1 today reminds me of La Liga in the early 00's before the competition took off and began dominating Europe. I don't expect Ligue 1 to reach the heights Spanish football has, but the championship is in a very good place and is showing clear sustained growth from top to bottom. Between the strength of the French system, the talent pool French clubs pull from, the quality of French stadiums, and the leagues new television rights deal with Mediapro-- I only see things improving from here.
To give you an example of what I'm talking about. Today I watched Nîmes Olympique versus Marseille. Marseille is a very good team that finished 4th in the league and reached the Europa league final. Nîmes was promoted from Ligue 2 where they finished 2nd behind Reims. Today was their first time playing in the French top flight in over 25 years. Normally you would expect their to be a gulf in class between a top 4 team and a club that was promoted. You often see newly promoted clubs park the bus and play the counter to avoid embarrassing results, but that isn't what I saw today. Nîmes took it to Marseille. They fought hard and were full of quality players I'd never heard of: Denis Bouanga, Sada Thioub, Umut Bozok, and Renaud Ripart. They were playing one and two touch passes, breaking lines with great runs or well played through balls, etc. It was a pleasant surprise.
And therein lies the beauty of Ligue 1. There are great talents and hidden gems everywhere, even as low as the second division. A few years ago it was N'Golo Kante and Thomas Lemar performing magic for newly promoted Caen, last year it was N'Dombele and Ismaila Sarr, and now there is a new group of players making names for themselves. It isn't La Liga or the EPL, but it's a fun competition nonetheless.
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Jair Ventura
New member
PSG
[youtube]UToVQt9viSA[/youtube]
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Monaco
[youtube]ew7O3d1RKmY[/youtube]
Marseille
[youtube]MvaVdrozCnY[/youtube]
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[youtube]tnPpKGn60v4[/youtube]
[youtube]nctBAWdScXs[/youtube]
Monaco
[youtube]ew7O3d1RKmY[/youtube]
Marseille
[youtube]MvaVdrozCnY[/youtube]
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Jair Ventura
New member
[youtube]QIXxCEiz04Q[/youtube]
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Jair Ventura
New member
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Jair Ventura
New member
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Jair Ventura
New member
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Jair Ventura
New member
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Jair Ventura
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="fr" dir="ltr">C'était écrit. Venu de l'eau pour mettre le feu <br><br> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheFlyingDutchman?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TheFlyingDutchman</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/OMnation?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#OMnation</a> <a href="https://t.co/Wla4k3fRMF">pic.twitter.com/Wla4k3fRMF</a></p>— Olympique de Marseille (@OM_Officiel) <a href="https://twitter.com/OM_Officiel/status/1034452071234396160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 28, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Jair Ventura
New member
Jair Ventura
New member
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khaled_a_d
Senior Member
I think you need to edit this post?!
te amo barca
Blaugrana al vent
French clubs have only won 3/18 of their games in Europe this season. But Jair will tell us how strong Ligue 1 is, of course.
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