Last weekend saw the first matchday of the revamped and rebranded top flight of French women’s football, now known as the Première Ligue. The intention behind the new format, backed by an increased budget, is to accelerate professionalism and, in the words of the league president, Jean-Michel Aulas, to turn France’s top flight into the “best professional women’s league in Europe”.
While the first batch of games indicated business as usual for the time being – there were comfortable wins for the usual suspects in Lyon, Paris Saint-Germain and Paris FC – there was nevertheless a conspicuous absence from the 12 participating clubs.
Before finishing second bottom in May, Bordeaux were one of the leading lights of women’s football in France. A second consecutive podium finish in 2021 – after a campaign spearheaded by Khadija Shaw and her 22 goals – led to a first appearance in the Champions League, which ended in a defeat to Wolfsburg on penalties in the second round of qualifying.
Colossal debts incurred over the past few years, though, meant the club as a whole were placed under administration in August, and consequently lost their professional status. While the men’s team are back in action in the fourth tier, spurred on by a rapid recruitment campaign, the women’s team appear to have been left by the wayside.
During the summer there had been hope that the women’s side would be spared from the impending cataclysm, as the recently founded UK-based investment firm Sphera Partners looked set to complete a takeover. Those hopes were dashed at the start of September, when the DNCG, French football’s financial watchdog, excluded the women’s team from the national-level divisions over a lack of guarantees. The investment firm, the club announced, then withdrew from talks after opting not to appeal against the decision.
Sphera Partners told Moving the Goalposts that the prospective takeover was a “complex deal” that it would have been keen to pursue were it not for “time constraints with administration”. When asked by Sud Ouest last week, the divisive club owner and president, Gérard Lopez, claimed that although he was “prepared to personally put in more money than anyone else”, he could not “concentrate on saving both the professional men’s team and the women’s team”.
The Seconde Ligue, as a result, will be made up of only 11 teams this season. Bordeaux, with only a handful of players still left under contract and no announcement over who will take charge of the team, are yet to begin their campaign in the regionalised third tier.
A group of Bordeaux supporters have recently launched a Socios project, inspired by the fan-ownership models of Spanish and Latin American football, and have been looking to engineer a rescue plan for the women’s team with the help of local authorities and a private investor. For the time being, though, the team remains in limbo.
The situation has raised indignation from former players such as Charlotte Bilbault and Julie Dufour, as well as some of French football’s major figures, notably the Lyon striker Ada Hegerberg: “To see a women’s team disappear amid indifference in 2024, the year of the Olympics in France, is a disgrace”, the Norwegian striker said.
Aulas has indicated that he had made efforts, along with the French FA president, Philippe Diallo, to bring investors on board in time – to no avail. “It’s a reminder that the economy of women’s sport needs to be developed with private investment, but also with some commitment on the part of local authorities”, the former Lyon president explained.
The club captain, Andréa Lardez, had been with the team since their inception, having started her career at Blanquefort, the club that merged with Bordeaux to become the latter’s women’s side in 2015. The defender told Moving the Goalposts that after an “emotional rollercoaster” of a summer, the senior players still at the club are ready to turn the page: “At this point, we’re just waiting for our contracts to end so we can move on.
“This is the problem when you depend on men’s teams. We know that for certain clubs and owners we aren’t the priority. When cuts need to be made, it can come down on us”, she adds, pointing out that second-tier Orléans narrowly avoided suffering the same fate last season – and were eventually saved this summer thanks to state funding.
For Lardez, Bordeaux’s situation is a “symptom” of the lack of progress French women’s football has made in comparison with its neighbours. “We have a professional league now, but it should have been created five or six years ago”.
“Hopefully we’ll serve as a warning and that things will also move forward in terms of the players’ working conditions, seeing as there’s still no collective bargaining agreement in place.”
Whether the Première League is able to prevent further cases such as Bordeaux’s, it seems, will be one of the ultimate tests over the long-term to show that it is more than just a flashy rebrand.
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