If it’s a yes, it’s time to play: saved from its administrative demotion to National (3rd division), Bordeaux will host Valenciennes on Saturday for the start of the L2 season, with a workforce that is certainly limited in terms of recruits, but a huge weight off the shoulders.

If it’s a no, the noose will close again: the Girondin club, demoted by the financial policeman of French football, the DNCG, on June 14, then by the federal appeal commission on July 5, does not will have no choice but to continue his legal fight by filing an interim release with the Administrative Court, thus trying to avoid a catastrophic bankruptcy filing for this monument of French football.

In this hypothesis, the timing will be tight and it seems difficult to imagine the Girondins returning to the pitch on Saturday for the first day, even in the event of a repechage via the courts. The meeting against Valenciennes does not appear in the calendar of the Professional Football League (LFP) pending the current procedures.

Before thinking about the field, Bordeaux and its president-owner Gerard Lopez, very present in the media in recent weeks, turn their eyes towards the headquarters of the “3F”, in Paris.

This is where the 14 members of the federal “Comex”, meeting on Wednesday morning, will have the fate of the club six times champion of France in their hands.

– Le Graët and “senseless risks” –

With, at the end of the table, the president of the FFF Noël Le Graët. Himself who had qualified in 2020 Lopez, then at the head of Lille, of “financial acrobat”. Himself who also felt, at the beginning of July, that “the risks that have been taken (by Bordeaux) are a bit insane”.

To convince the Federation and its boss, Lopez has however found some arguments in recent days. On the one hand, an approval judgment from the Commercial Court of Bordeaux certifies the sustainability of the club in L2 and its financial viability next season. On the other hand, the favorable opinion of the CNOSF conciliators, delivered on Monday, has given hope.

The conciliators have indeed noted that the Girondins had “provided significant efforts in order to present the elements allowing to remove a certain number of doubts (…) so that the measure pronounced (by the appeal commission of the DNCG Federal) now appears excessive”.

These elements, which were not considered as new documents but as complementary and therefore admissible by the CNOSF, related in particular to a debt reduction of nearly 40 million euros due to creditors King Street and Fortress, and the receivership of 14 million euros by Gerard Lopez via his Jogo Bonito holding company as a guarantee for the sale of players during the transfer window.

That of striker Sekou Mara in Southampton, made official on Monday by the English club, must bring in at least 11 million euros in the coffers of the club, which also relies on profit-sharing (up to 20%) on the plus- value of the transfer of Sevillian Jules Koundé to Chelsea or Barcelona.

But the opinion of the CNOSF, advisory, is not always followed by the Comex… If Nice (2002) and Lens (2014) had obtained a happy outcome after a successful passage before the CNOSF, Strasbourg (2011) and Le Mans (2013) had been rejected by the “3F” after convincing the National Olympic Committee.

The Girondins dream of a destiny in Nice or Lensoise, which would allow them to challenge Valenciennes on Saturday in the second division.

A nod to history, it was against VA that the Girondins won the title of D2 champion in 1992, a year after being demoted administratively following the various cases related to their former president, Claude Bez …