Rock bottom best thing to happen to Les Girondins

You know things are dire when hitting rock bottom is a relief. You might be at your lowest point, but you still exist. The ground hasn’t swallowed you up, and while you lay prostrate, humiliated, you eventually understand that the only way is up.

Girondins de Bordeaux is at rock bottom — and lucky to be there. It is still, just barely, a football club. But it exists. And given how close it came to oblivion, existence is good enough for now. Not that it doesn’t hurt.

The dizziness of the drop, and pain of the landing, is felt in relation to the height from which you fell. Bordeaux fell from the top of the mountain.

On May 30, 2009, Les Girondins won its 11th match in a row and was crowned Ligue 1 champions for the sixth time. A month earlier, it had lifted the Coupe de la Ligue — a competition in which it drubbed Paris Saint-Germain at Parc des Princes in the semifinal.

It won its fourth Coupe de France in 2013, and in 2016 it became just the second club to win 1,000 top-flight matches, after Marseille. (Saint-Étienne, Monaco and Lyon have since accomplished the feat).

Slightly more than 10 years on, Bordeaux spent the past week preparing for a Friday match against Aviron Bayonnais. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. It was the Bayonne B team that awaited it in the French Basque Country, for a showdown in Régional 1 — the semi-professional six tier of French football. Rock bottom, indeed.

The manner of Bordeaux’s fall was as discouraging as it was protracted.

The club that once nurtured the talents of Alain Giresse, Christophe Dugarry and Zinedine Zidane, and more recently Jules Koundé, Aurélien Tchouaméni and Malcom, began its tailspin in 2020, when COVID-19 compelled the cancellation of the Ligue 1 season.

The resulting loss of revenue, compounded by the collapse of the division’s broadcast partner, spooked the club’s American owners into withdrawing their support. Bordeaux entered financial administration — its first of several bankruptcy proceedings — and suffered five relegations in five years, four of them caused by repeated insolvencies.

Of course, there was always more to the decline than a lack of money, and the culture at Château du Haillan under former president Gérard López was demoralizingly toxic.

Late last month, López sold Bordeaux to Park Bench, an analytics firm, for one euro (C1.60). On Monday, the club appointed a new president and new head coach. That left three days of preparation before the trip up the coast to Bayonne.

And yet, despite the grim circumstances, the mood amongst Les Marines et Blanc has quickly become remarkably upbeat, as if the thud of hitting rock bottom has reminded everyone they’re still breathing, still alive. Mere weeks removed from the prospect of liquidating the cafeteria cutlery, they get to play a game of football.

The club seems to understand the privilege.

On Thursday, captain Driss Trichard told regional daily Sud Ouest that the prospect of reviving a once-proud outfit was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” New signing Baptiste Guillaume, a former Belgium youth international, remarked in an interview with local radio that the club’s story “could be rewritten.”

Another positive development has been the hiring of former Bordeaux defender Paul Baysse as assistant coach. Retired fan favourite Benoît Trémoulinas, now 40, is planning a comeback to help the club he joined as a nine-year-old. And six members of the squad have agreed to convert their professional contracts into amateur ones.

Still, there remain challenges. The new owners are due in court next month to provide an update on their financial plan. The situation remains tenuous, and there will no doubt be setbacks on the pitch.

But you get the feeling the worst is past.

Rock bottom is as bad as it gets, but it can also be a platform. And as you raise yourself off it and tilt your head just a bit, you can catch a glimpse of the light from the top you tumbled from, and to which you aim to return.

winnipegfreepress.com/jerradpeters