Andy Carroll to the rescue?

I live in a small French village that is about a 75 minute drive inland from the city of Bordeaux.

Most of my neighbors didn’t care about football because they were firmly entrenched in the oval ball tradition. Benji is the exception, but he is far from happy these days.

Benji is a Bordeaux supporter.

If you think we’ve had a rough time under the fifteen years of carnage known as the Ashley years, consider Benji.

FC Girondins de Bordeaux have been described as one of the ‘most legendary’ French clubs, having won the Ligue Un six times (the last time in 2008/9), the Coupe de France four times (2012/13 was their most recent win) and the Coupe de la League three times (highlighted by a league and cup double in 2008/9). The club has helped develop the careers of some of French football’s absolute greats, such as Zinédine Zidane, Alain Giresse, Jean Tigana, Christophe Dugarry and, more recently, Aurélien Tchouaméni.

Not quite in the same category, but for most Newcastle United fans the most important connection they would make with Bordeaux is probably the much-maligned Yoan Gouffran – the first of three connections or parallels I would draw with Bordeaux and NUFC. Playing as a forward or winger, he scored the winning goal that sealed the league title for Bordeaux in the 2008/9 season and also scored one of the Bordeaux goals to help win the League Cup final that same season.

With such a record of scoring crucial goals, it was unfortunately inevitable that the Silver Snide, aka Alan Pardew, would convert him into a complementary left-back. I liked Gouff for his attitude and work rate, but he became a bit of a whipping boy, unfairly in my opinion. I wonder how things would have gone for him if he had Eddie as a manager?

Anyway, back to my buddy Benji.

Despite his team’s undoubted pedigree, Benji has had to watch helplessly as they have fallen quite spectacularly in the league over the past four years. Their disastrous decline is inevitably rooted in a complex story of speculative owners who come, go or (sadly) don’t come along, with attendant financial irregularities – compounded by an incident of idiotic fan misconduct.

The dramatic fall from grace began in the 2021/2022 season. As of April 2021, they had admitted they were struggling financially, partly due to the impact of Covid restrictions, but also due to the loss of sponsorship when Mediatron, the TV rights holder, went bankrupt and missed payments. The club subsequently went into administration when King Street (their American owners) declared that they would no longer support the club financially.

Despite acquiring a new owner – Gerard Lopez, who also owns Portuguese club Boavista – they finished bottom of the league and were relegated. But worse was to come, as due to the financial irregularities surrounding the club’s activities, they were effectively further relegated to the Championnat National – the third tier of French football – by the Direction Nationale du Contrôle de Gestion (the French body that oversees all matters relating to football clubs).

However, a reprieve was granted on appeal, so they were reinstated to Ligue 2 on 27 July 2022. The aim, of course, was to regain top-level status at the first attempt – something they may have been on course to achieve coming into the final game of the season.

I wrote an article for The Mag entitled “Pitch Invaders” that detailed what happened in the final game of the season. Bordeaux’s match against Rodez was abandoned. Rodez scored after 22 minutes. As their players celebrated next to the goal, a disgruntled Bordeaux fan ran onto the pitch and pushed two Rodez players into the back. They fell to the ground and one of them, Lucas Buadés, immediately grabbed his head and writhed around in apparent pain.

He was taken off with suspected concussion and the referee stopped the match. The league’s disciplinary committee subsequently ruled that the match, which Bordeaux needed to win to keep their promotion hopes alive, would not be replayed and awarded the three points to Rodez. It also deducts a point from Bordeaux for next season? But the worst was yet to come…

After leaving the American owners, the club was bought by Gerard Lopez, a Spanish/Luxembourgish entrepreneur with an interest in sports. But his reputation was tarnished. Lopez, previously owner of Lille, a successful club on the field, was forced to sell as the club suffered heavy losses in 2020. Major creditors Elliot Management Corporation and JP Morgan Chase forced the sale.

A recurring theme runs through Mr. Lopez’s sporting activities. He bought the Belgian top club Royal Excel Mouscron in 2020, but it filed for bankruptcy two years later.

It wasn’t just football. Lopez was president of the Lotus Formula 1 team when they incurred significant debts of £114 million in 2014. Something he blamed on the costs of introducing hybrid engines. Renault completed a buyout the following year.

Issue 250 – September 11, 2010

It seemed to fans that Bordeaux were following Lopez’s blueprint when the club finally filed for administration in the summer of 2024, after several appeals. As reported by Swiss Ramble in Substack on August 12, 2024, Bordeaux had to file for bankruptcy to avoid “heavy additional sanctions” due to the club’s ongoing financial problems. As a result, the club had to give up its professional status, “terminate the contracts of all its players and close one of France’s most important youth academies, highlighting the colossal mismanagement of recent years.”

Consequently, the club was further relegated to National 2 – the fourth tier of French football. Since then, they have been plagued by protests from fans and have had to deal with a temporary withdrawal of support from the municipality for the use of the home stadium.

The fans were very pessimistic. As reported by NBC News (October 15, 2024), David Gluzman, a Bordeaux fan and director at Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, stated:

“In the fourth tier, your sources of income are receipts and sponsorship money. I would be surprised if the club even gets €2 million from that,” he said.

“The money coming in from the resale costs will be used to pay off creditors. The club will only be viable if Lopez makes up the difference between that amount and the €8 million budget.”

In an interview with The Athletic, Lopez stated that while he “understood” the fans’ anger, “they should blame those who sank the club” before he arrived. “I tried to turn things around and paid for it with my own money, and I’m still here to save the club,” he added. “If I were to withdraw from the club today, it would just disappear.

“We have made a phenomenal effort to reduce the debt we inherited from previous shareholders. When I took over the club, the financial debt was around €100 million, and today it is only €11 million.”

This is the second connection I see with our club. The fabulously wealthy new owner comes in, ‘suddenly’ discovers that the club is massively in debt, claims to have put his own money into it out of the goodness of his heart and blames everyone else for the situation. Friendly Gerard, anyone? Sound familiar?

However, this most discouraging setback for “Les Girondins” leads us to the third and most interesting of our connections with the club.

With the new manager, Bruno Irles, financially crippled, he had to be creative to be able to field a team for their first match against Poitiers. As well as recalling retired players, he was able to recruit an aging but inspiring Geordie by the name of Andy Carroll!

Big Andy took off running. His debut was in a home game and also happened to be the first back at the club’s stadium, Matmut Atlantique. The first match, against Voltigeurs de Chateaubriant, attracted an attendance of more than 10,000 fans.

By November, Andy had scored seven of the club’s eleven goals and had become a very popular player. He loved the environment as he was largely anonymous outside of the playing side of life. In an interview he said:

“I can go to a bakery and buy a pain au chocolat without anyone saying to me, ‘How was the match? Can I have a photo?'”

“I feel like I’m normal. I just wanted to go out and be free, be myself.”

“Here I can go to the zoo with my kids and they don’t say ‘come daddy’ while people ask for pictures or autographs.”

“There’s a little pub around the corner where I went to watch a PSG match with other boys! What a match! Nobody said anything to me.”

Unfortunately, you’ve probably already guessed what comes next. Unfortunately, Andy’s soft tissues refused to play along and, frustratingly, he found himself sidelined for much of the winter months with, I believe, an Achilles injury. He finished the season with 11 goals in 21 appearances. At the end of the season he left the club “to be closer to his children”. I think he can be proud of the contribution he has made and satisfied with the appreciation for his efforts by fans like my friend Benji. What a pity that his body could not match his mind!

Despite Andy’s best efforts, Bordeaux were unable to challenge their promotion spots that season and are now in the lower reaches of French football for the second time.

Unfortunately, their problems continue. In August 2024, brief hope was raised with a possible takeover by Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group. However, talks broke down over costs related to the use of the Matmut Atlantique stadium and French football’s general financial problems.

Problems remain with disputes between fan groups. A conflict between the two main groups of fans has led to many matches at lower division grounds being played behind closed doors for security reasons. North Gate’s fans specifically accuse the Ultramarines of being too close and soft on their owner. I wonder if they call them sheep and merry clappers?

Poor old Benji is still waiting for the good times to come again. As of October 31, 2025, their record is 8 played, 4 won, drawn 2, lost 2. They are 5th in the table 2 points behind leaders La Roche Vendée – a commune of 54,000 inhabitants compared to Bordeaux’s 1,018,070 in 2025 (according to the World Population Review).

Still. He can console himself with the performance of his new second team in the NE corner of Angleterre – as long as he watches the home games!