• Gérard Lopez has become the new owner of the Girondins de Bordeaux.

  • The businessman recovers a tattered club.

    The objective of the season will be the first part of the table then Europe within three years.

  • For now, he can count on the support of the supporters.

217 days. This is the time that Gérard Lopez will have taken to bounce back after his tumultuous departure from LOSC in December 2020. This Friday, July 23, he officially became the new owner and president of the Girondins de Bordeaux. “I feel some relief in the club. Afterwards for me, it's a bit special because it's not the end of something but the beginning with a complicated situation to manage. A real challenge! », Launched the new boss of the club in the scapular just two weeks before the start of the Ligue 1 season.

If it is indeed a new era which begins with the Navy and White with a lot of hopes for the supporters, the situation of the club, it will not become all rosy overnight.

As a reminder, the Girondins came close to judicial reorganization or even liquidation only a few days ago.

The current situation is perhaps even worse than three years ago when the club was bought out by American investment funds, King Street and GACP.

The structural deficit has not disappeared and especially in sporting terms, the new management has to deal with a team at bay for several seasons and in which the active players can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

So why would Gerard Lopez succeed where the Americans have completely failed?

He knows football ... and has already proven himself

It may seem like a banality but the first difference with these precedents is that Gérard Lopez knows the world of football. Not at all sure that even today Joe DaGrosa, the president of GACP, or the invisible leaders of King Street know what is an offside after three years at the head of the club. The former owner of the Formula 1 Lotus F1 Team already has several experiences. He of course led the LOSC between 2017 and 2020 as everyone knows, but he is also the owner of the clubs of Mouscron (Belgium) and Boavista (Portugal). The Spanish-Luxembourgish businessman therefore knows perfectly well the functioning of the football community, its economic context and above all the risks involved.

🔴⚽️Info @ 20Minutes Vladimir Petkovic on pole to replace Jean-Louis Gasset at the @girondins!

The name of the coach of the Nati is at the top of the pile in front of that of Joao Sacramento.

Discussions are underway 1/5 #Bordeaux #Girondins #FCGB https://t.co/IU0VIXUTB5

- Clement Carpentier (@clementcarpet) July 22, 2021

Like more and more clubs, it is based on the trading model. But unlike many, and in particular the former owners of the Girondins, he does not hide it at all. It's the cash side of man. To put this model in place, he relies on people who are extremely well-known in the world of football. It was Luis Campos at the Mastiffs, it will be Admar Lopes at the Girondins. The latter is the ex-right arm of the Portuguese sports advisor, considered today as the best sports director in the world. Gérard Lopez knows what to expect and he is not going to start selling dreams by promising to invest 80 million euros in the transfer window and quickly play the Champions League like a certain Joe DaGrosa in his time. “Sportingly,the objective is to try to aim for the first half of the Ligue 1 table this season and then to play Europe within three years, ”he explained simply on Friday.

A double-edged financial situation

Gérard Lopez repeated it several times during his first speech, “there is no time to waste”.

And at all levels.

At first, he wants to "stabilize" the club before being able to "perform".

For the moment, the financial situation remains very precarious but as Albert Einstein said: “In the midst of any crisis there is a great opportunity!

The new president of the Girondins, elected by a new board of directors of seven members (Jean-Didier Lange, Jean-Louis Triaud, Andrea Rossi, Claude Zimmer and Guy Cotret), should in any case not be much wrong.

He will not be able to afford to take ten players and hope by crossing his fingers that one of them explodes, as AS Monaco can regularly do.

For him, one thing is certain, it is sporting results and the sale of players that will allow the accounts to be put back afloat and not necessarily a vast restructuring plan even if one of the club's evils for ten years has been to be completely oversized. Finally, it is fair to remember that debt is not as important as it was three years ago for GACP and King Street. The two American investment funds had bought the club for nearly 100 million by borrowing 38 million euros from another fund, Fortress. For his part, Gérard Lopez finally took over the club for three times cheaper (30 million euros). Today, his debt "is only" 50.5 million euros (a new loan of 20 million euros from Fortress and King Street is added to the initial loan from Fortress which agreed to reduce its debt from 38 to 30.5 million euros). A big question mark remains all the same: who will vouch in a year before the DNCG if the deficit rises again to more than 30 million euros?

The supporters in the pocket

Like a savior, Gérard Lopez even had the right to some smoke during the cocktail party organized by the club to celebrate the change of owner at the Château du Haillan. The leaders of the Ultramarines, the largest group of Bordeaux supporters, wanted to thank him in their own way. After months of conflict with Frédéric Longuépée (the former CEO of the club), Gérard Lopez is indeed not far from becoming an icon in just a few days for most of the supporters of the Navy and White. It must be said that the former president of LOSC is a remarkable charmer far from being stupid, to be polite, and who quickly understood that it was necessary to put the Ultramarines in the pocket to hope to see the end of this deal. He succeeded perfectly in considering them as an integral part of the club even if from this Friday,he recalled "that everyone should know how to stay in their place".

Gérard Lopez: "We are not going to go back to the old logo, but to the logo of the Girondins de Bordeaux".

pic.twitter.com/rQX0Vu6CBF

- FC Girondins de Bordeaux (@girondins) July 23, 2021

And to complete his seduction operation, he signed a masterpiece: “I will be very clear: we are not going to go back to the old logo, we are going to go back to the Girondins de Bordeaux logo.

All is said.

“A news that the Bordeaux supporters celebrated for a long time on social networks in the evening.

This state of grace Gérard Lopez will surely take advantage of it because, as one of his relatives reminds us, "he always installs his men (or women) of confidence in decision-making positions" and inevitably some heads risk being cut off.

But be careful, we will also have to look back in time because the Ultramarines are not fooled and have proven it well over the past three years.

Fine speeches, they have known by heart for ten years.

Now they are waiting for action and it is on this that Gérard Lopez will be judged.

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