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Lemar, qu’on voit danser le long des… French football 2018-19

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    #26
    Ugh, I see Consolat have renamed themselves "Athletico (sic) Marseille".

    Comment


      #27
      Was able to get a good stream of BeIn's Multiplex of tonight's Ligue 2 matches.

      The overall quality of play was not inspiring, and Auxerre (who lost at home to Gazelec) looked particularly lost.

      Comment


        #28
        Originally posted by linus View Post
        You don't get to become a real estate billionaire in NY without a modicum of business skills. Trump has got a lot of personal issues and shortcomings, but he's not clueless. The macro situation in Atlantic City was quite bad, with the industrial decline in the region and the rise of Las Vegas.
        Trump really seems to have seriously misjudged the situation in Baku and certainly did in Atlantic City. As you write, the whole regional economic situation wasn't great so God knows why he thought he could pull it off there. That makes his failure there even more damning as it was probably avoidable. He thought he could create an East Coast Vegas and came a complete cropper. He just isn’t the great businessman he makes out to be and was lucky to have his family to bail him out on several occasions. I would also like to know how legit his New-York property deals were too (with Roy Cohn as his mentor and lawyer, somehow I doubt they were).

        Donald Trump’s Business Decisions in ’80s Nearly Led Him to Ruin

        https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/n...axes-debt.html

        Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, portrays himself now as a self-made man who began life with what he has characterized as a meager $1 million advance from his father. That figure itself represents a significant understatement about the support his father provided him over the years. But in his darkest moment, Mr. Trump again leaned on his family’s wealth, this time to ride out a financial tsunami.

        At one point, the balance of his personal bank accounts was expected to drop below $1 million.

        By 1990, Mr. Trump had amassed $3.4 billion in debt, much of it in the form of high-interest junk bonds. He was personally liable for $832.5 million of that. He had bought a yacht for $29 million, the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan for $407 million and a failing airline for $365 million. All were losing money.

        The Castle casino in Atlantic City recorded total losses of $93.2 million in 1990 and 1991. The Trump Regency hotel there lost $8.3 million in 1991. The Trump Plaza casino lost $29.2 million in 1991.

        Casino regulators in New Jersey warned that “the possibility of a complete financial collapse of the Trump Organization is not out of the question.” Most, if not all, of those losses would pass through to Mr. Trump’s tax returns because of the ownership structure of the casinos.

        The Casino Control Commission concluded in 1991 that “Mr. Trump cannot be considered financially stable, a condition for renewing his casino licenses at Taj Mahal, Castle and Plaza.” Still, it did not pull the plug on him.

        “The consequences of doing that would have been horrific,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was chairman of the commission from 1991 to 1994. “We weren’t prepared to do that unless we had no choice.”

        His airline, Trump Shuttle, lost $34.5 million during just six months in 1990.

        In addition to actual losses from his other businesses, the nearly $1 billion total in losses probably also includes paper losses on Mr. Trump’s real estate holdings through the use of depreciation rules that allow real estate developers to deduct the cost of a building over a number of years.

        […]

        He promised to make up for a cash shortfall with the sale of condominium units in Trump Tower in Manhattan. When that did not generate enough money, he filled the hole in his balance sheet with the “unforecasted receipt of funds from certain family-owned properties in New York City” — apparently referring to fees from properties his father, Fred C. Trump, had built outside Manhattan.

        Comment


          #29
          Originally posted by Diable Rouge View Post
          Ugh, I see Consolat have renamed themselves "Athletico (sic) Marseille".
          Oh dear. And with the wrong exonym to boot.

          Tonight’s Ligue 2 games:

          Auxerre 2 – 3 Gazélec Ajaccio
          Béziers 0 – 1 Ajaccio
          Le Havre 1 – 1 Grenoble
          Metz 5 – 1 Orléans
          Niort 4 – 2 Clermont
          Paris FC 2 – 0 Nancy
          Sochaux 0 – 1 Valenciennes
          Troyes 1 – 2 Brest

          Lens-Red Star tomorrow and Chateauroux-Lorient on Monday.

          Comment


            #30
            Em he did inherit a real estate business. And would have had as much money from sitting on his inheritance as from his bigly business dealings. That’s a very charitable view of what he was up to in Atlantic City.

            Comment


              #31
              Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
              Em he did inherit a real estate business. And would have had as much money from sitting on his inheritance as from his bigly business dealings. That’s a very charitable view of what he was up to in Atlantic City.
              Certainly not a very charitable view from me! The man is a complete fraud.

              The National (3rd tier, professional) season got underway tonight. The results:

              https://www.lequipe.fr/Football/national-resultats.html


              Cholet 0-1 Tours
              Marignane Gignac 1-0 Pau
              Chambly 2-2 Le Mans
              Avranches 1-0 Dunkerque
              Drancy 0-0 Boulogne-sur-Mer
              Lyon Duchère 2-2 Rodez
              Laval 1-1 Quevilly-Rouen
              Entente SSG 1-1 Villefranche Beaujolais
              Bourg-en-Bresse 1-1 Concarneau

              Comment


                #32
                Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                Was able to get a good stream of BeIn's Multiplex of tonight's Ligue 2 matches.
                Interesting, which one?

                Comment


                  #33
                  Strangely, no TV company in either the UK or Ireland currently hold the rights to Ligue 1 with one week until the new season begins - the previous holders were dealing with an intermediary that has since gone bankrupt.

                  Comment


                    #34
                    PM pour M. Flaquettes

                    Comment


                      #35
                      PSG are playing Monaco right now in the Trophée des Champions (French SuperCup) in Shenzen, as one does.

                      Comment


                        #36
                        Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                        PM pour M. Flaquettes
                        Thanks.

                        Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                        PSG are playing Monaco right now in the Trophée des Champions (French SuperCup) in Shenzen, as one does.


                        Monaco looked a bit shit in the first half (from what I watched anyhow, much better now) but that was predictable as they’re having to rebuild the nucleus of the team after the departures of Lemar (Atl. Madrid), Moutinho (Wolves) and Fabinho (Liverpool) and are fielding their youngsters today. Bought Golovin as well, and Alohou who impressed last season with Strasbourg. Falcao is not quite match-fit so he's sitting this one out.

                        Nice to see Timothy Weah given a run-out, he played a few games at the fag end of last season.

                        Comment


                          #37
                          Hélas!

                          http://twitter.com/MarseilleUK/status/1026503013895102466
                          Last edited by Diable Rouge; 07-08-2018, 11:58.

                          Comment


                            #38
                            Good Spécial Ligue 1 FF guide on sale atm if you’re in France (sold abroad too but difficult to get) or downloadable from their website, but hurry new issue comes out on Tuesday. I’ve just received my copy (I don’t subscribe anymore but I get sent the odd one), got the Ligue 2 one too (last week).

                            Comment


                              #39
                              They’ve stopped selling individual issues by download, which is unfortunate.

                              The USD 6 per month subscription is excellent value, given how much individual hard copies can cost (if one can find them), but I find that I no longer have sufficient interest to read it every week.

                              EDIT: or maybe they haven't. It looks like they've abandoned the app that they've used for some time. But now downloads from the website seem not to be working properly.

                              Hélas
                              Last edited by ursus arctos; 12-08-2018, 13:40.

                              Comment


                                #40
                                Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                They’ve stopped selling individual issues by download, which is unfortunate.

                                The USD 6 per month subscription is excellent value, given how much individual hard copies can cost (if one can find them), but I find that I no longer have sufficient interest to read it every week.

                                EDIT: or maybe they haven't. It looks like they've abandoned the app that they've used for some time. But now downloads from the website seem not to be working properly.

                                Hélas
                                I've never tried to download them as I just don't do digital but yes $6 a month is v. good value.

                                The weekend Ligue 2 results, matchday 3: https://www.lequipe.fr/Football/ligue-2-resultats.html (great start from Lens, 9 pts, hopefully it'll be their year).

                                Ligue 1 results (matchday 1): https://www.lequipe.fr/Football/ligue-1-resultats.html

                                I’ve watched some highlights on YT and am now watching the Ligue 1 highlights on the Canal Football Club programme on Canal+ and it looks like Nice could really struggle this year, beaten 1-0 at home by newly-promoted Reims. Ursus, I remember we talked about Nice's immediate future here last May, from posts #532 in the "Sacked managers" thread, and the danger of the Chinese-American owners selling all their best players in the close season – namely Pléa, Seri, Le Marchand and Balotelli (Balo not gone yet but defo a wantaway player, huge €450K a month salary) etc. despite their big "Nice Project" ambitions (installing Nice in the top 4 after the excellent 4th and 3rd places of 2016 and 2017). Too early to say obviously as they will hopefully buy a few more players (it looks poor up front) but it could be a rocky season for the new manager, Patrick Vieira, and the Aiglons supporters. Could be "Ligue 2 Project" if they’re not careful.

                                Comment


                                  #41
                                  Eventually got it work.

                                  In order to buy individual issues (2.99 euro, excellent value outside of France), one needs to order the issue from their website or app and then download it in a completely different app in order to read it.

                                  Someone went to X to devise that system . . .

                                  I share your concern about OGCN (though Ligue 2 is increasingly the homecof all of my favored French clubs).

                                  Comment


                                    #42
                                    Indeed ursus, plenty of interesting clubs in Ligue 2.

                                    I was looking at the AS Béziers squad just now and realised that their 35 yr-old Brazilian keeper, Macedo Novaes, has played in all first 4 French divisions, from Ligue 1 to the old CFA (now National 2, semi-pro) since his arrival in France in 2005.

                                    Excellent start from 2 of the 3 newly promoted teams, Béziers (the smallest Ligue 2 budget, ~€6 million) and Grenoble.

                                    Red Star are struggling OTHO, possibly because the "French Sankt Pauli" play in Pétaouchnok (in some godforsaken faraway place, and in front of an empty stadium, a move also boycotted by the Red Star supporters – and now, the fans of Beauvais (French 5th tier) who have been forced to migrate to another, much smaller, stadium because of Red Star are now boycotting their own team too…) like they did in their last two Ligue 2 seasons a few years back (Jean-Bouin Stadium in southwest Paris in 2016-17 was a much better option than Pétaouchnok Beauvais in 2015-16 but still far from ideal although the average attendance went hugely up while at Jean-Bouin, ~5,000), but more probably Red Star are struggling because they basically have the same squad as last year's in D3, with hardly anyone in there having any experience of Ligue 2 or above apart from 3-4 players, such as ex QPR midfielder Samba Diakité, Emmanuel Bourgaud, Moussa Sao and the veteran goalkeeper Douchez, but that is all.

                                    It has to be said too that Red Star haven’t played the easiest teams so far (especially Lens and Le Havre) so hopefully they will improve as they gain experience and face less challenging opposition, they’ve given a decent account of themselves so far from what I’ve heard so they will want to believe they can stay up.

                                    The charming but decrepit Bauer stadium was barely good enough for D3 so never mind suitable for D2 (hardly been touched up since the mid-1970s when they were last in the top flight, especially the south stand, the roofs, the dire pitch and the crappy lighting; the club – budget: €6,5m – couldn’t find the €2 or €3m necessary to do it up this summer and bring it up to Ligue 2 standard and couldn’t get a dispensation from the football authorities to play at historic Yves-du-Manoir stadium in nearby Colombes, used by rugby club Racing 92 up to 2017 but now unused and slowly being repurposed for the 2024 Olympics but not quite up to scratch for Ligue 2 football in a number of areas, notably lighting, CCTV and dressing rooms).

                                    Bauer will hopefully be fully renovated before the 2024 Olympics (could be used as a training ground but needs complete redevelopment) but that’s not certain at all, it’s one of the many projects submitted to the Inventons la Métropole du Grand Paris 2 scheme, it’s passed stage 1 but many more hurdles ahead before it’s given the final go-ahead, https://www.inventonslametropoledugr...de-villiers-2/ In English: https://www.inventonslametropoledugr...saint-ouen.pdf

                                    Comment


                                      #43
                                      You may or may not recall that I was a regular at Stade Bauer during my last period of residence in Paris in 1993. Although I loved it, the ground was vétuste even then, and it can only have gotten worse in the intervening 25 years.

                                      Beauvais is a disaster, and one exacerbated by the fact that Ligue 2 plays a large majority of its matches on Friday nights. Although the club has put on coaches for the 80km journey, it can be challenging for anyone who isn't able to leave their place of employment at the stroke of 17h00 to get to Bauer in time for the coach, even if one is so inclined. As with the last time this happened, many supporters are wondering if the club wouldn't be better off back in the National, and it wouldn't surprise anyone at all if that's what happens.

                                      As you know probably even better than I do, Red Star has long been a plaything for various chancers' attempts to build their profile, with perhaps the most striking example being the completely Quixotic attempt to have them become the "home" club at the Stade de France. My current fear is less that they will be relegated than that they will lose their now traditional place as the city's "second" club to Paris FC. Should that happen, and should the redevelopment plans fall through, Red Star could quite easily go the way of Racing Matra, Stade Francais, the earlier incarnation of Paris FC and the other clubs who have failed to flourish in the less than hospitable ground of professional football in Paris.

                                      The current administration at Red Star has focused a great deal on youth (down to 8 year olds) and the club's role in social inclusion. I'm obviously biased, but it would be beneficial for Paris as a whole (and the 93 in particular) if they are able to thrive as a community-centred club.

                                      Comment


                                        #44
                                        Ah, the perennial issue of the second big club in Paris & area... I’ll try to post about it later today before I leave for the Continent tomorrow.

                                        Comment


                                          #45
                                          Originally posted by Pérou Flaquettes View Post
                                          Ah, the perennial issue of the second big club in Paris & area... I’ll try to post about it later today before I leave for the Continent tomorrow.
                                          I was going to make a hilarious gag about you going to the supermarket, but it seems Continent was consumed by Carrefour almost 20 years ago.

                                          Comment


                                            #46
                                            Would your badinage about me going to the Continent and the now-defunct eponymous hypermarket brand involve leakage-related issues of any sort perchance? (if so, it probably has been done before).

                                            Comment


                                              #47
                                              Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                              You may or may not recall that I was a regular at Stade Bauer during my last period of residence in Paris in 1993. Although I loved it, the ground was vétuste even then, and it can only have gotten worse in the intervening 25 years.

                                              Beauvais is a disaster, and one exacerbated by the fact that Ligue 2 plays a large majority of its matches on Friday nights. Although the club has put on coaches for the 80km journey, it can be challenging for anyone who isn't able to leave their place of employment at the stroke of 17h00 to get to Bauer in time for the coach, even if one is so inclined. As with the last time this happened, many supporters are wondering if the club wouldn't be better off back in the National, and it wouldn't surprise anyone at all if that's what happens.

                                              As you know probably even better than I do, Red Star has long been a plaything for various chancers' attempts to build their profile, with perhaps the most striking example being the completely Quixotic attempt to have them become the "home" club at the Stade de France. My current fear is less that they will be relegated than that they will lose their now traditional place as the city's "second" club to Paris FC. Should that happen, and should the redevelopment plans fall through, Red Star could quite easily go the way of Racing Matra, Stade Francais, the earlier incarnation of Paris FC and the other clubs who have failed to flourish in the less than hospitable ground of professional football in Paris.

                                              The current administration at Red Star has focused a great deal on youth (down to 8 year olds) and the club's role in social inclusion. I'm obviously biased, but it would be beneficial for Paris as a whole (and the 93 in particular) if they are able to thrive as a community-centred club.
                                              [1/3] will finish writing the rest tonight if I can, off swimming in 10 mns (sorry, plenty of digressing and typos most probably below)

                                              No, I wasn’t aware that you’d been a ST holder there, lucky you. I first went to Bauer as a bairn when they were still in the top flight, they had decent gates then, ~8,000 I think. I remember seeing the great Swedish winger Roger Magnusson play and the equally great Argentinian-French Nestor Combin too (a star player at the time – mainly as a Lyon legend, where he formed a lethal partnership with the legendary Fleury Di Nallo at Lyon, as a matter of fact those 2 actually played together at Red Star for the last D1 season of the Audoniens, 1974-75, but they went down).
                                              Combin was a dead ringer for Jacques Brel too, or Diego Costa, a mix of the two in fact). Went a few times after that but I have only been back twice since the 1990s. Last time I went there there about 12 yrs ago, there was hardly anyone at Bauer, there were “3 pelés et 1 tondu” as we say in French (= 1 man and his dog), 500 spectators tops. It was depressing to see this once-great club with such an outstanding history and tradition sink so low. (They’d lost their professional status and were wallowing in the bowels of French amateur football, D5-D6, can’t remember which regional division exactly but they were in a sorry situation, they very nearly folded at that precise time).

                                              There are several issues at work here, to explain why it’s been historically so hard to establish a second top flight club in the Greater Paris area in the last decades (Matra Racing is an outlier here, and that “2-club in D1 in Paris” period was short-lived). In summary, the main reasons IMO are:

                                              #1. A dearth of football private investors in France (there was Jean-Luc Lagardère at Matra Racing who really injected some serious wonga into the club but that’s about it for the Greater Paris area until the Qataris arrived in 2011 and bought PSG for a pittance, even the previous PSG owners – Hechter, the very eccentric Borelli, Canal+ and Colony Capital – didn’t put in much).

                                              The filthy rich people outre-Manche much prefer to sink their squillions into other areas (vineyards, ridiculously expensive properties, mega-yachts etc.) or into vanity projects (politics and vote-buying – the late Serge Dassault), or into whatever the current fads happen to be. At the minute the ultimate ego trip if you’re a squillionaire is to showcase your ginormous private art collection in your own specially-created “trophy art gallery” (just what Paris needs of course, more museums), eg the Louis Vuitton Foundation and soon the Bourse de Commerce gallery where François Pinault’s contemporary art collection will be on show in 2019 (Pinault is shelling out €100m+ to gut and do up this great building and it could even bear the Pinault name, possibly “The Collection Pinault – Paris”), courtesy of Bernard Arnault and the Pinault family – who own Stade Rennais but it’s merely a weekend pasttime for son François-Henri and his actress wife Salma Hayek. Fucking Paris municipality got massively conned over that Bourse du Commerce purchase, they paid €86m for that could have been acquired for a nominal sum, or about 65m less than they paid, according to the Canard Enchaîné anyhow.

                                              Just a fraction of what the Paris municipality has wasted on that would be enough to do up 1 stadium in the Paris area (eg Bauer…), even on a temporary basis, and give local clubs a leg-up (Red Star, Paris FC – PFC have alrealy got the adequate-ish Charléty ground of course but could do with more help) and financial assistance to develop their academies for instance (huge talent pool to tap into in Greater Paris) with a view to get to Ligue 1 where they could then stay up thanks to TV money, sponsorships and good management (talking of structures and academies, the Red Star has very little of that at the minute of course).

                                              I mean, up to a few months ago Red Star didn’t even have a dedicated recruitment team and they still have no academy although they do have a few youngsters coming through, but they all leave before being given a professional contract. There’s only 1 club-developed player in the senior squad this season! (that’s out of about 30 players) and that player is only 17… (Ismaël Camara, he actually played 13 minutes vs Lens 10 days ago, I’ve just checked. Red Star did well vs Lens, only lost 1-0 to a brilliant Lens' team goal). An impoverished club like Red Star should rely on a good solid academy but the huge problem is that there is precisely no academy worthy of the name at Red Star, youth development is done in an ad hoc and unstructured way at the minute, the club puts the good youngsters in the ressies, low down the regional divisions (D7 or D8), they don’t progress, get frustrated and leave. The club is planning to open a proper centre de formation in nearby La Courneuve but it will take years, don't know where they'll get the money, hope it's not one of the chairman's pie in the sky plans.

                                              The examples of small clubs with gates of <15,000 who are regular top flighters are numerous. A second top-flight club in or around Paris would also have far more potential to grow their fanbase, attract sponsors and develop into a big-ish club than the likes of Guingamp, Troyes, Auxerre, Nîmes, Amiens, the Corsican clubs etc. whose growth scopes are fairly limited.

                                              A handful of businessmen, such Alain Afflelou – a famous owner of the big eponymous French optician chain – have tried in the past to take a Greater Paris club all the way from the lower leagues to the top flight (US Créteil in Afflelou’s case, in the mid-1990s) but they soon gave up when they realised that reaching Ligue 1 is no cinch, and getting harder (the divide is widening, it could be done a very small budget before but now, I'm not sure. There are exceptions - Nîmes last year, €8 million, and the Corsican clubs too - but you need all the planets perfectly aligned, a stable club, a few top strikers, an academy etc. not the Red Star's case at all). Afflelou, who owned Girondins de Bordeaux at the time, gave up after only 5 yrs (Afflelou had taken Bordeaux from the legendary Claude Bez– photo below –, a nutter and Bernard Tapie’s nemesis in the 1980s, the two traded insults for years. Bez, who liked to cruise down the iconic Canebière thoroughfare in Marseille in one of his Cadillac convertibles and wave at people just to wind up Tapie and the Marseillais whenever the very successful Bordeaux were playing at the Vélodrome – said Cadillac did get vandalised a few times… – died of a heart attack in 1999.



                                              Bez really got under Tapie’s skin and the latter, then a minister under Mitterrand, was desperate to both get at Bez and weaken Bordeaux, so rotten Tapie got the French Inland Revenue and his eccentric mate Michel Charasse (the then minister of justice IIRC) to investigate Bez’s dodgy financial dealings and shyster Bez, a chartered account by trade, was duly done for fraud in a massive way, that really fucked Bordeaux who were administratively relegated to D2 in 1991 (massive debts and fraud) and Bez had to step down. That’s when Alain Afflelou came in and saved Bordeaux (invested a few millions and got them back into D1 and into the top 4), so buoyed by his success Afflelou tried to do the same with lowly Créteil in 1996 but came a cropper. Afflelou took Créteil in D3, got them promoted to D2 after 3 yrs on very low gates and gave up 2 yrs later as he could see he was flogging a dead horse with Créteil as far as reaching D1 was concerned anyway. Even at Bordeaux (which he got for a bargain price), I don’t think he really ever was into football, he mostly wanted to raise his media profile and use his football clubs as a cheap advertising vehicles, à la Mike Ashley or the Venky's people at Blackburn.

                                              Comment


                                                #48
                                                [2/3]

                                                #2. The relative lack of enthusiasm for club football from the general public in France, but particularly so in the Greater Paris. A relatively transient population and many “provincials” live there, real provincials and “Parisian provincials”, people who even if they were born & brought up in the Paris area still often define themselves as being from a particularly region other than Greater Paris, especially when they come from areas with a strong identity, i.e Auvergne-Lozère-Ardèche (lots of Auvergnats or people of Auvergnat extraction in Paris, due to rural exodus phenomenon that started in the 19th century), Brittany (lots of Bretons in Paris, ~500,000 in Greater Paris out of a population of 12 million), Corsica etc. These people are generally very attached to their roots, sometimes physically (they have kept a second home there, or bought one later – even just a small flat – a common thing in France, hence the 3.5 million second homes not rented out - although increasingly AirBnBed or rented out for weekends etc. to cover costs -, they're often used by families for holidays) and if they are football people they will often continue to support their regional club(s), or even other sports/teams, rugby, basket-ball etc.

                                                Point #2 is linked to the #1 that I posted earlier today: weak levels of engagement, identity issues (feeble sense of belonging, those people do not feel "represented" by these teams) put off potential investors. It is a great shame as quite a few of these banlieues have the right demographics for a second top flight club to emerge and do well in the long run, Greater Paris could defo sustain several top flight clubs and may well do will one day (it has been done in a recent past after all, 1980s, well, 2 clubs), not in the way London does (London is very much the other end of the spectrum, also an exception) but smaller capitals or major cities, Madrid, Lisbon, Milan, Rome etc. with at least 2 top flight teams.

                                                But some structural issues really need sorting out first as I was hinting at in my post #1, i.e proper stadia, solid academies etc. especially Red Star, as Paris FC has an OK stadium and a proper centre de formation (the big Paris FC boss since 2012, the Corsican Pierre Ferracci, is very keen on youth development, they have much more money than Red Star and have invested in infrastructures, staff etc.). The Charléty ground is fine but hardly ideal for football, it’s an athletics stadium for starters and pretty soulless, but well located.

                                                Paris FC, Paris’s current best hope by far of having a second club in Ligue 1 within 5-10 yrs, is symptomatic of that identity issue and permanent state of flux in Parisian football: in its only 48 yrs of existence, Paris FC has already merged with 2 clubs (with the forerunner of PSG one year after its creation in 1969) and nearly merged with 3 others, they’ve already changed colour 4 times, they’ve changed name 4 times too and changed ground and training grounds many times (even playing in Troyes, 100 miles away, in the early 1980s) and have yo-yoed up and down the amateur and professional divisions. Paris FC seem much more stable now (same chairman for the last 6 years and one who seems to have a long-term vision) and they have a decent budget, the 9th in the division this year, about €12 million (Red Star's: €6m). However, Paris FC’s gates are so shit it’s tragic: they only have a few hundreds spectators when in D3 (their natural habitat) and barely 3,000 when the club is in D2 which is not very often...

                                                That said, it would probably be multiplied by 4 or 5 should Paris FC reach the promised land (the football public is fickle in most parts of France, but particularly in Paris, bloody fair-weather fans – I remember them briefly in D1 in the late 1970s, they had good gates). They finished 8th last year and have a very experience manager in Mehmed Baždarević and a few decent players (with the Burkinabé winger Jonathan Pitroipa probably the jewel in the crown, ex Rennes and Hamburg, as well as the Madagascar international L. Nomenjanahary, who’s played in D1 with Lens).

                                                https://twitter.com/ParisFC/status/1026494139305811969


                                                #3. The lack of proper football stadia in the Paris area, that’s always been a barrier to success.

                                                That major drawback makes it hard for investors to envision a long-term project, cf the Red Star case, the nomads of French football, who have groundshared and played in several grounds even while residing at Bauer, they’ve also nearly been dissolved several times or done some desperate stupid stuff, such as in the 1960s when they tried to merge with... Toulouse, 700 kms away. Poor stability and a lack of long-term vision have hugely hampered the club.

                                                The sad thing about this Red Star issue is also that to progress these days, certainly to have a proper stadium, reach D1 and stay up, you have to embrace the business principles and ruthless attitudes that underpin modern football, and I’m not sure Red Star is ready for that, not sure they have the right people for that as well. It’s great as a football club to be alternative, local, inclusive, to focus on proximity with the fans, to organise community stuff and all the rest of it but it’s probably easier to thrive with that philosophy once you have put money aside and have laid down solid basis, after you’ve established the fundamentals (stadium, academy, staffing structure etc.), not before.

                                                Not sure for instance what David Bellion’s role at Red Star is (I happen to like him a lot but that’s beside the point), the ex Sunderland & Man United striker has been their “creative director” there for 4 years, presumably on a decent wage. Is it really the sort of position they need as a priority knowing that a) they are skint b) have no stadium c) have no academy? I know they’re trying to drum up support, raise their profile, be different etc. but shouldn’t they concentrate on the basics first? I hate to criticise them of course but it sounds awfully hipstérisant.

                                                The owner since 2008 is Patrice Haddad, I dont know much about him TBH, he seems to mean well and the fans are reasonably happy with him from what I can gather (although they’re losing patience I believe) but one does wonder about his sanity at times: only 5 yrs ago he was telling the media that he was putting the finishing touch to a €200 million (!) project, with a new stadium planned by the old dock area (by the Seine) in Saint-Ouen for 2020, comparing his project to what Arsenal have done with the Emirates… (he’s also used Fulham as an inspiration for success. Yes, fucking squillionaires Arsenal and ultra-posh Fulham… Red Star don't exactly have the same sort of backers that the Gunners have and Saint-Ouen's socioeconomic profile is a tad different from Chelsea-Fulham area's.

                                                Red Star instead have the backing of the penniless communist municipality and the super-skint Departmental Council (department 93), in other words the poorest dpt in metropolitan France. I mean, this is an area of Greater Paris where mayors regularly protest loudly and go on strike (even on hunger strike) just to be heard from the central gvt as their towns sink in the red and nobody gives a shit, eg Taïbi at Stains and Gatignon at Sevran (the latter has just thrown in the towel actually, a few months ago) so, a successful pro football club with a decent stadium etc. doesn’t feature very highly in their list of priorities.

                                                FFS… by all means be ambitious but build a club step by step instead of putting together some crazy unrealistic Arsenal-like plans, just this summer as I wrote in one of my previous posts (yesterday I think), Haddad couldn’t even find €2 million to do up Bauer to Ligue 2 standard between May and August, that’s why they have to trek all the way to Beauvais to play "at home", so never mind finding €200 fucking millions. The salvation for Red Star as I wrote in that yesterday's post could come via this "Inventons La Métropole du Grand Paris 2" scheme linked to the 2024 Olympics, they’ve applied to see whether their stadium could be renovated as part of the Olympics, it's early days yet but hopefullly something good will come out of it. Bloody Hollande, a "Red Star faithful" apparently (yeah, right) had promised to help them but fuck all happened, so they now deserve a bit of luck.

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                                                  #49
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                                                  #4. The general lack of political will and help (financial, logistical etc.) from the Paris municipality and the departmental & regional authorities. The Paris municipality hugely favours PSG as they do not want a second club in the capital (eg they’ve never helped Paris FC).

                                                  Since Chirac, Paris’s mayors have never been that fussed about football, and even less so when PSG hooliganism regularly reared its ugly head (right from the late 1970s with the creation of the extreme right Kop Boulogne ultra groups), with that terrible image that many PSG supporters in general and particularly Ultras had up to when the Qataris bought the club in 2011, both at Parc des Princes and at away games involving the PSG, the serious hooliganism problems between the Kop Boulogne vs the Auteuil virage groups (= corner, in a stadium context; “la curva” in Italian football, where the ultras and most passionate supporters traditionally are) and now that it’s far trendier to like football they firmly believe that one big club is much better than 2 average ones.
                                                  Saint-Ouen is of course outside of the Paris limits but is a very close suburb and falls under the new “Métropole du Grand Paris” structure (est. 2016), they could easily facilitate the emergence of another club if they wanted but PSG’s hegemony trumps all and they clearly prefer it that way.

                                                  Another hurdle has been the pregnance of a certain regional fragmentation and the existence of a spatial divide within the Greater Paris area/Île-de-France (it can feel very much as Paris vs the rest of the region, a fact typified by the Périphérique), there is a strong sense of alterity here, of alienness, and has certainly not helped cohesion between all the stakeholders, which is a vital factor for success in the absence of a wealthy investor who can come in and rewrite the rules with his chequebook.

                                                  Red Star missed the boat in the late 1990s while in D2, they had a good solid project with various stakeholders (public – the municipality + the 93 Dpt council – and private investors) to totally revamp and modernise Bauer into a Ligue 1-worthy ground with (in fine) a capacity of ~16,000 I think it was. But the owner at the time (ex Red Star player Jean-Claude Bras, he loved the club but was blind to its limitations) got obsessed by his ambition to play at the new Stade de France (after PSG said they were not interested), as ursus has pointed out in his post #43 and Bras solely focused on the Stade de France when it was clear that it was totally bonkers for a club like Red Star with average gates of 4,000.

                                                  It got even stupider when a Red Star–St-Étienne D2 league game of March 1999 drew 45,000 spectators at the Stade de France, a complete one-off obviously (at least 2/3 of the public were there just to see Sainté – still a huge pull in France – and many seats had been given to schools etc. or hugely discounted) but that made the then owners even more determined to move to the Stade de France… The Red Star board wasted time and energy chasing that mirage and took their eyes off the ball (the other sensible project of developing Bauer), the football authorities eventually rejected their request to play at the Stade de France and before you knew it, that sensible project that had taken years to put together had evaporated and the best players gone, and Red Star started their slow but brutal downright spiral, they were relegated to D3, then quickly to D4, and D5... and even D6… (mid 2000s). Red Star were only reacquainted with the D2 in 2015 (they finished 5th that 2015-16 season and were only 1 point away from going up to Ligue 1. But it’s such an unstable club that they finished 19th the following season and went down to D3).

                                                  At the time, when they last had that solid project of developing the stadium while in D2 with the avowed ambition to reach D1 (so late 1990s), there wasn’t such a gap between the D2 clubs as there is now, so a few €millions who have sufficed to reach the promised land, but now forget it, midget budgets like Red Star's can’t compete anymore with the likes of Lens or Metz (5 or 6 times Red Star’s budget). There are exceptions of course (Nîmes last season, their small €8m budget didn’t stop them from being promoted to Ligue 1 but Nîmes have been quite stable for a few years, had a couple of great strikers etc. not Red Star’s case at all) but it’s just not feasible anymore for a club like Red Star, even if they went up (like they nearly did in 2016), they’d go back down straight away and could even do an Arles-Avignon, not only go back down but be placed in administration due to bad management and overspending.

                                                  Anyway, Dec. 21st, the “Paris derby”, Paris FC v Red Star.
                                                  Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 14-08-2018, 22:15.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Anyway, I’m off to the Continent tomorrow and will be very busy pretty much as soon as I come back in 2 weeks and a bit (new role at work, more shit to do etc. – partly things that I should have done yonks ago but managed to procrastinate for nearly a year but I really can’t mañana it anymore) so I’m very unlikely to be around much in months to come, so I wish you all a good season.

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