The ax fell for FC Sochaux-Montbéliard. The oldest French professional club (since 1928) took a step closer to filing for bankruptcy on Thursday August 3. Abandoned by its Chinese shareholder Nenking, the club hoped to obtain a stay of administrative justice to retain its professional status and its place in Ligue 2.
In vain. “We have just learned of the decision of the Administrative Court of Paris dated August 3, 2023 which refuses to examine the request of the FCSM on the grounds that the urgency is not demonstrated, while the Ligue 2 championship begins this Saturday, “announced Romain Peugeot, great-grandson of the club’s founder, in a statement sent in the evening to Agence France-Presse.
Back to a fiasco that took root in 2014, as explained to the point Jean-Baptiste Forray, author in 2022 of At the heart of the great downgrading. The lost pride of Peugeot-Sochaux (Editions du Cerf).
Le Point: In what state of mind are the supporters after the announcement yesterday of the failure of the recovery plan for FC Sochaux?
Jean-Baptiste Forray: They fall from very high. They believed in the supreme savior with the possible arrival of Romain Peugeot at the head of the club. You should know that this surname is forever linked to the country of Sochaux: it is the one that made the fortune of this little corner of the East which is located near the Swiss and German borders. This arrival could have made it possible to pick up the pieces in a way. It must be remembered that there was a very clear break and very hard felt by the population in 2014 when the decision was made to sell the club [sale which will be effective in July 2015 to the Chinese Ledus, editor’s note].
What image does Romain Peugeot have for FC Sochaux supporters?
Romain Peugeot represents the last heir of the family to show his attachment to the “11 of Lions”. He had already tried several times to take over the club.
Was he supported by the rest of the Peugeot family?
This is the question that arises… We can doubt it. It seems that some family representatives like Christian Peugeot – communication director – supported Romain Peugeot. We also know that Romain’s father, Éric Peugeot, is a former manager of the club. This is the famous “little Eric” who was kidnapped in the 1960s.
But there is also another part of the Peugeot family, embodied by the leader of the Robert Peugeot dynasty, which has nothing to do with the Auguste-Bonal stadium and the players of Sochaux. He really got on the bandwagon of globalization, of diversification on the move.
Peugeot and then Stellantis bear a significant part of the responsibility for this fiasco?
Totally. The club was abandoned at that time. Carlos Tavares, new CEO at the time, got rid of it like an old sock. He sold the club off to very unsavory Chinese buyers. There was 15 million euros in cash at the time still in the club’s coffers. Some people have paid themselves on debt.
Then the club was pledged to other Chinese, the Nenking group, which handed the reins of the team to the controversial Samuel Laurent, whose knowledge of football is relatively limited. He liquidated a good number of historical executives of the staff in place, he gave pharaonic salaries to certain players, etc.
We are far from the management of the club in the 1970s…
That was his strength at the time. The management was square, without bling-bling. The players in those years, Bernard Genghini or Joël Bats, lived in prefabs that had been occupied by workers from the Sochaux factory! The players themselves called themselves “foot workers”. Every year, they went to the factory to see the supporters. When Sochaux played the Coupe de la Ligue final in 2004, the whole factory was decked out in the club’s blue and yellow colors and PSA had chartered whole trains to allow people to go up to see the final in Paris. It is an institution that is collapsing.
How did you come up with the idea for this book?
I was interested in this France of factory towns. Hearing Isabel Salas Mendez, Peugeot’s head of partnerships, say in 2019, about a possible takeover of the club: “Football is a sport that does not go too well with our values ??at the moment because it vehicle of slightly more popular values ??and we are trying to move upmarket. », that I said to myself that there was a story to be told about the rupture between this traditional capitalism which has governed Peugeot for decades and this completely anonymous new multinational which denies its own history. The liquidation of FC Sochaux marks the end of the corporate culture at Peugeot.
Has Stellantis manifested in recent weeks?
Yes, the first instinct of many local players, employees or Sochaux industrial complexes was to call on Stellantis. Carlos Tavares dismissed them last week. While the manufacturer had just announced record profits of nearly 11 billion euros for the first half of 2023.
