American businessman wanted to make Olympique Lyon a flagship club but is heading for relegation

Seven-time French football champion and five-time French Cup winner Olympique Lyon continues to slump in performance and results this season! Not long ago, one of the best marketed European clubs was crouching at the bottom of the French top flight table.

We all know Lyon’s reputation for football and no one would have guessed that Lyon had already managed to part with its second coach a third of the way through the season, which only adds to the panic surrounding the unprecedented results. Yet, until relatively recently, Lyon was one of the most financially literate clubs in Europe and had many projects on many fronts.

Lyon’s academy is one of the best in Europe, having produced great footballers for many years and thus, of course, a pretty decent transfer cheque. They are top of the rankings in Europe in terms of the amount of money collected for players, which has also ensured they have been comfortable within the financial rules for many years. Lyon have prospered until recently and have continued to grow. They are one of the few clubs to have paid close attention not only to the academies but also to the women’s team, which until recently completely dominated the Champions League.

The loss of revenue from the European Cups has been felt by Olympique Lyon. And even though they have sold players for more than they spent and their academy also still generates a decent amount of money, they have targeted Lyon’s club DNCG, which oversees financial fair play in the French league, and in doing so has thwarted Lyon’s original plan to buy as they would have liked to themselves.

An otherwise previously precise transfer policy did not put Lyon in this situation. Of course, suddenly Lyon failed to sell players like Depay or Dembele who were leaving Olympique as free agents. Olympique Lyon is suddenly under French scrutiny for financial fair play and has its hands pretty much tied when it comes to selling, swapping or buying players.

The whole chaos has been compounded by the fact that the man who built the club all the way up from the second tier in over thirty years, Jean Michel Aulas, has recently given up a major position at the club. He retained ‘only’ an eight per cent stake and a lot was built in Lyon during his time, right up to a brand new stadium costing more than 600 million euros.

In addition, Lyon has another multifunctional arena for 16,000 people, a world-class women’s team, an academy that is one of the best in the world… What actually happened? John Textor is a fifty-eight-year-old American businessman who owns, for example, Crystal Palace football, but also action clubs such as the snowboarding club in British Columbia.

The American businessman took over the Olympique Lyon club from Jean Michel Aulas, saying it would be the flagship club in his “amazing multi-club project”, as the American has stakes not only in Crystal Palace but also in Brazil’s Botafogo and RWD Molenbeek, the club promoted to Belgium’s top competition, to help them collect talent.

But this is exactly what the DMCG’s fair transfer oversight committee doesn’t like. The proof is the only goal scorer of the season so far, Olympique Lyon’s Jake O’Brian, who came to Lyon for a million euros from Crystal Palace, where he didn’t even play.

That’s how bad Lyon are this season. Moreover, relations between the businessmen Aulas and Textor have become heated after the new American owner accused his predecessor of withholding information regarding the threat of sanctions due to the financial situation, and with a debt of over 400 million euros, he has to give up something. Aulas has even managed to sue Textor and have another fifteen million euros frozen.

The new owner of Textor believes they have a great chance to get out of this situation, only as I said before, it will cost them something and their 16,000 seat arena is up for sale. There are also plans to merge the women’s team into a group of other clubs in which Lyon would own less than fifty percent.

Because of this, Lyon’s managers have already started working on the sale of the women’s football team, which is to belong to this group. Their stand for less than 60,000 fans, combined with their solid academy and, most importantly, the necessary improvement to the lost scent of the transfer market, has a chance to rehabilitate the club financially. It just involves successful results on the pitch, which has yet to come.

And that is currently the most pressing, but certainly not the only problem for Lyon, who are languishing at the bottom of the table. I’ve already mentioned that the absence of European Cups is a disaster for Lyon, as their seventh and eighth place finishes from previous years confirm. That team was bought by an American businessman with the aim of finally creating competition for Paris SG, but so far we see the complete opposite, with competition for teams fighting for salvation.

Source: Olympique Lyon, Wikipedia