sport news Bordeaux have gone from Champions League to THIRD division in 12 years trends now
With Bordeaux in disarray, anger unwilling to subside and financial Armageddon seeing them unceremoniously demoted to the third tier, fans would be forgiven today for thinking back to the night of April 7, 2010, inside a raucous Chaban-Delmas stadium.
Stirring up nostalgia is one way to lift the gloom but even memories as great as that run to the Champions League quarter-finals in 2009-10 - which culminated that April night with a 3-2 aggregate defeat to Lyon - comes tinged with sadness in the sense that good times have been fleeting ever since.
Now Bordeaux, one of the most famous clubs in France and one that brought through Zinedine Zidane as a player, has seen their boom or bust approach detonate on them. Failure to get their finances in order in the coming days and weeks and a spell in the abyss of the third tier awaits.
Bordeaux have been demoted to the third division of French football pending an appeal
Fans have protested frequently throughout the years having seen a steep decline in 12 years
A coffin was held up by one fan with Bordeaux's financial issues catching up with them now
Many may ask how Bordeaux have fallen to such a low, have fallen to a point where they seemingly have no plan on or off the pitch. Bordeaux's fans may find themselves surprised it has taken this long.
A decade-plus of mismanagement has finally caught up with them but this is not a moment for rivals to celebrate. This should arrive as a warning that no club can outmanoeuvre this many bad decisions.
Last season Bordeaux finished bottom of Ligue 1, the top flight of French football, and wrapped their horror show of a campaign with a goal difference of minus 91.
It was far and away the worst defensive record in Europe's top five leagues. They didn't even manage a clean sheet until the start of April.
Low-lights included a 6-1 battering by Lyon, a 5-0 capitulation to Reims and then Rennes hit them for six. The humiliations began to feel like episodes in a series that was never ending.
And yet that level of ineptitude was only enough to shove them into Ligue 2, the second tier. It was to be the mess in their accounts that did the damage they are now furiously fighting to undo.
Direction Nationale du Controle de Gestion (DNCG), French football's financial watchdog, did some digging and left unsatisfied at what they found, made the decision to relegate them to division three pending appeal.
Bordeaux immediately appealed.
Flashing back to more than a decade ago, they would regularly play Champions League games (Pictured: Bordeaux closing down Chelsea winger Florent Malouda in a 2008-09 match)
Here stands a team that has six Ligue 1 titles to its name, a team that has a UEFA Cup final appearance from 1996 on its resume, a team that was a fixture in the Champions League until the last decade, and now a team that is at risk of being the team French football forgets.
'Girondins de Bordeaux will appeal the DNCG's decision to relegate the club to National 1,' the club said in a statement.
'It is with dismay that FCGB notes the DNCG's decision to announce an administrative relegation to the third tier. The club will obviously appeal the decision immediately.
'This brutal decision, after nearly two hours of hearings in good conditions, deprives the club of continuing its strategy to clean up its finances and write a new page in Bordeaux's history.
'Heard on June 14 by the DNCG, the club presented a guaranteed re-engagement of the majority shareholder of $10.4 million, an agreement with the club's debtors as well as offers for a few players more than the total targeted amount.
'The club remains confident in its ability to demonstrate a solid project for the 2022-23 season and the appeal will grant time to finalize new solutions to ensure Ligue 2 status.'
