Where did it all go wrong for Bordeaux?

Long Way Down

Sad news from France in the last few weeks, as the storied Girondins de Bordeaux had to file for bankruptcy in order to avoid “heavy additional sanctions” over the club’s ongoing financial difficulties.

This dramatic step also entailed giving up the club’s professional status, terminating the contracts of all its players and closing one of France’s leading youth academies, which highlighted the colossal mismanagement over the last few years.

The French financial watchdog, the Direction Nationale du Contrôle de Gestion (DNCG), had already provisionally relegated Bordeaux to the Championnat National (the third tier) after the club was unable to provide financial guarantees ahead of next season.

As a result of Bordeaux giving up their professional licence, the DNCG announced a further administrative relegation to National 2 (the fourth tier in French football).

History

It beggars belief that this could have happened to one of the most storied football clubs in France that has won the league on no fewer than six occasions with the most recent title coming in 2008/09.

That qualified Bordeaux for the following season’s Champions League, where they got as far as the quarter-finals, having finished ahead of both Bayern Munich and Juventus in the group stage.

The club has also featured some of the absolute greats of the French game, such as Zinedine Zidane, Alain Giresse, Jean Tigana, Christophe Dugarry and more recently Aurélien Tchouaméni.

League Position

Not only had Bordeaux been mainstays of the French top flight for several decades, but they regularly featured at the top end of the table, only finishing outside the top seven once in the nine years following their title win in 2008/09.

However, there then followed three disastrous changes in ownership, which culminated in the club’s relegation to Ligue 2 in 2021/22 after finishing rock bottom, having only won six games and conceding a horrific 91 goals.

Following this rapid decline, Bordeaux spent the next two seasons in the second tier, narrowly missing out on promotion in 2022/23, before finishing in a hugely disappointing 12th place last season.

American Owners

For many years Bordeaux were owned by M6 Metropole Television, but the media company decided that the club needed more capital to compete at the highest level, as they were concerned about the arrival of wealthy investors at Paris Saint-Germain and Monaco.