• Interested in taking over the Girondins, Gérard Lopez is ready to make a takeover offer from King Street, the investment fund that owns the club.

  • A few months after his ousting from LOSC, the businessman is supported in his project by an investment fund but he would also invest money from his personal fortune.

  • Between his highly criticized financial management and his sporting success in Lille, his candidacy questions the microcosm of Bordeaux.

Whether it is for good or for bad, the simple evocation of his name always makes a lot of talk in the community. Gérard Lopez rarely leaves indifferent. So obviously since this weekend and its appearance in the list of candidates for the acquisition of the Girondins de Bordeaux, the debates are lively between lovers of the club with the scapular. "He has zero complexes", immediately slips a connoisseur of French football at

20 Minutes

and it is, moreover, perhaps, the greatest strength of the Spanish-Luxembourg businessman. Only a few months after his eventful departure from the Mastiffs, he would indeed already be ready to return to the fore, reports

L'Equipe.

So is he really a candidate for the redemption of the Navy and White? An ambiguity remains. Why ? Quite simply because he did not follow the classic route with the Rothschilds to buy the club as

Sud Ouest

explains

.

He did not send a letter of intent and above all did not make any offer at this stage unlike other candidates. No, it was the investment bank responsible for the sale that came to get him! “They did this because they surely have few credible candidates to their liking. Their job is to optimize the sale for their client, therefore to find buyers. It is completely their right and perfectly normal ”, explains a person close to the file.

Girondins de Bordeaux: Four candidates selected for the club buyout https://t.co/txNR20Urgo via @ 20minutesBord pic.twitter.com/B8vl8OjWpm

- 20minutesbordeaux (@ 20minutesbord) June 2, 2021

An offer coming within 24 or 48 hours?

This approach, Gérard Lopez did not remain indifferent to it.

Since leaving LOSC, the one who already owns Mouscron (Belgium) and Boavista (Portugal) is looking to buy a club.

And Bordeaux, he knows very well since he was very interested in the Girondins a few years ago before finally heading north in 2017.

Today, the businessman is still awaiting some feedback on the financial situation of the Navy and White, and in particular from Fortress (the fund which loaned 38 million euros to the current owners to buy the club in 2018 ) to get started.

His offer is ready and he will decide within 24 to 48 hours whether to drop it off at Rothschild's desk, according to information from

20 Minutes.

He who knows perfectly the world of finance and particularly that of investment funds is no stranger to Fortress and King Street, the owner of the Girondins de Bordeaux.

Gérard Lopez is also supported by an investment fund in his project, but he will also invest money from his personal fortune, specifies his entourage.

Financial management criticized in Lille

His candidacy is of course cringe in the microcosm of Bordeaux. First of all, investment funds are not welcome after the berezina of the Americans since 2018. The end of his Lille adventure may also stick to his skin even if his relatives tirelessly remind us that he left the club. "Without a line of credit with a bank and that the strength of this season is worth 300 million euros".

Its financial management of LOSC has very often been singled out (the Mastiffs must do today with a debt of 100 million euros) and it ended up being dismissed by its investors last winter.

“There will surely be a lot of leverage in his project, explains another candidate, but unlike other files, Lopez has credibility in the management of a club.

And especially his detractors can not question his sporting success.

Can he reconstruct the Lille team?

If he was first wrong with Marcelo Bielsa to the point of being on the verge of relegation during the 2017-2018 season, the Lille then finished second, then fourth in the championship under his presidency and he has his share of success in the title of champion of France this season. Christophe Galtier has reminded us of this many times in recent weeks.

For now, it is difficult to know which sports team Gérard Lopez could come with.

Can he reform the same team as in Lille with Galtier and especially Luis Campos, considered today as perhaps the best sports director in the world?

The first is leaving for Nice while the name of the second is circulating on the side of Arsenal, Real Madrid or even PSG.

But the former boss of the Mastiffs remained close to the two men.

At this stage, his entourage refuses to answer this question.

One thing is certain if he positions himself formally on the acquisition of the Girondins de Bordeaux in the coming hours, the businessman will not come to sort the lenses as the other would say.

Sport

Girondins de Bordeaux: Didier Quillot, candidate for takeover, lands in hostile land

Sport

Girondins de Bordeaux: Four candidates selected for the club's buyout

Quillot met Anziani

The former general manager of the Professional Football League, Didier Quillot, also a candidate for the takeover of the Girondins with French and Anglo-Saxon investors was in Bordeaux in recent days.

If he may have seen the banners of the Ultramarines, the largest group of Bordeaux supporters, hostile to his coming, he especially met Alain Anziani, the president of Bordeaux Métropole.

The latter is a stakeholder in the case since he is co-owner of Matmut Atlantique.

Didier Quillot was able to present his project.

He will do the same in the coming days with the mayor of the city, Pierre Hurmic.

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