• Faced with a catastrophic financial situation, King Street decided to withdraw from the club and initiate a sales process.

  • Already structurally in deficit, the Marines and Whites have now paid for a completely above-ground management of their American owners for two and a half years. 

  • The club's debt is estimated around 100 million euros.  

More than 100 million euros. This is the deficit of the Girondins de Bordeaux today. A huge hole in the fund which ended this Thursday by pushing King Street, the American investment fund owner of the club, to release the Navy and White to put it "under the protection of the Commercial Court of Bordeaux" in order to start a sales process. As the club's CEO, Frédéric Longuépée himself would say, the shareholder decided to call the end of recess. To put an end (radically) to a financial mismanagement that has lasted far too long at the Château du Haillan.

Indeed, if the situation has deteriorated sharply since the acquisition of the club in November 2018 by the Americans, it was already not very glorious at the time of M6. This dates from the post-title management of 2009. At the time, the Girondins have eyes bigger than their stomachs, management notably increases wages. As time goes by, the club finds itself with an increasingly important structural deficit and every year, the chain puts back to the pot to erase it with the back of the hand until the day when it can no longer hold pace and decides to sell.

That year, the structural deficit is 25 to 30 million euros.

Yet M6 has always boasted of having sold the club without a dime in debt and even with a positive result of a few million.

Why ?

or simply because the club had just butchered it one last time thanks to the sale of Malcom to Barça for 40 million euros in the summer of 2018.

What possible scenarios after the withdrawal from King Street to the Girondins?

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A payroll that has exploded in two and a half years

Problem, the question of the deficit was not resolved because it was indeed a structural deficit with in particular a club which has "a club structure of the Champions League [nearly 300 employees] while they play 10th place in Ligue 1! Said a former leader. But the worst is yet to come. The club is bought on credit with a 40 million euro loan taken out by King Street from Fortress to be repaid by October 2022.

The investment fund also makes the mistake of entrusting the management of the Girondins to its partner GACP, another investment fund. Little looking at the situation of the club at the time, KS took a year to realize that the Girondins were going straight into the wall. Indeed, GACP will simply spend money that it does not have! This translates into a very strong increase in the payroll (of 11 million euros according to Joe DaGrosa, the president of the club at the time) and a lifestyle of the new leaders completely above ground.

King Street then stops the costs for the first time by ruling out GACP in December 2019. But in the months that follow, the policy does not change much.

Frédéric Longuépée, the new CEO, continues to recruit hard, sometimes with very high salaries.

The deficit continues to widen and yet, at the same time, the Navy and White sell the last "family jewels" to try to make up for the losses: Jules Koundé leaves for Seville for nearly 25 million euros while six months later in January 2020, Aurélien Tchouaméni joined Monaco for 18 million euros.

The two players are today at the gates of the France team.

LeCovid-19 and Mediapro ended up finishing the club

But unlike M6, King Street refuses to plug the hole "for free" at the end of each season. He stops him to pass the DNCG when the time comes, but considers this inflow of money as a new deficit. And of course by dint of accumulating these, the note quickly becomes salty. It does not matter if for a year the club has implemented an austerity policy to try at all costs to raise the bar. For example, 26 employees have left the club in recent weeks through a social plan.

Finally, the coup de grace arrived, as for others, with the Covid-19 health crisis and its economic consequences. The failure of Mediapro coming to complete the Girondins since the business plan of the Americans was notably built on TV rights. It was partly with them that King Street hoped to get his money back. It will not be. The deficit is now estimated between 60 and 80 million euros at the end of the season. An amount to which, we must add the loan of 40 million euros from Fortress, the bar of 100 million euros is not very far.

So why hasn't the DNCG said anything all this time?

Well, because King Street had until now always vouched for the financial policeman of French football.

The investment fund had even increased the club's share capital by 27 million euros last summer, then by 40 this winter to pass the DNCG before, at the beginning of the week, the board of KS decided to cut tap.

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Ultramarines call for rally on Saturday

The largest group of Girondins supporters is meeting this Saturday at 3 p.m. at Place Pey Berland in Bordeaux for all club lovers.

“A manifestation of anger, pride but also dignity.

An electric shock for our players, too.

Our club is in ruins, we cannot resign ourselves to watching it sink without saying a word, ”explains the Ultramarines in their press release.

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