Olympique Lyonnais finally keeps its place in Ligue 1

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OL is being maintained by the French Football Federation's appeals committee. In an initial decision, the DNCG had pronounced the club's demotion as of next year. While the club has finished its life on a high note, it's a lesser evil compared to the catastrophe that relegation would have been.

Olympique Lyonnais faces SCO Angers on May 17. (Olivier Chassignole/AFP)

Olympique Lyonnais has saved its skin. While we wait to find out what trick the Rhône club, with €540 million in debt posted in December, used to win over the Federal Appeals Tribunal (DNCG), which acts as the financial watchdog for French football. It's worth noting: the body has overturned its initial ruling of June 24, which sent OL to Ligue 2 for the 2025-2026 season. In a context where AC Ajaccio, with debts of between €10 and €13 million, has been demoted a division (from Ligue 2 to the National), we're curious to know what the club's management presented as a guarantee to the body.

According to L'Equipe , the latter had two requirements to avoid cutting the lifeline that linked OL to the elite and sending it into a process that would inevitably have led to bankruptcy. One: to feed the current account of OL, and not those of the Eagle Group galaxy that covers the club as well as Molenbeek in Belgium and Botafogo in Brazil, with around one hundred million euros. Sidelined last week in favor of Michele Kang, an Eagle shareholder like him, former president John Textor advocated management by communicating vessels, the money from Botafogo being able, according to him, to be allocated to the Lyon club if necessary: the DNCG has never stopped smelling a scam, the financial flows having until now been mainly directed from Olympique Lyonnais to the club based in Rio de Janeiro.

So we must believe that Michele Kang subscribed to this request of the i

Olympique Lyonnais (OL) Ligue 1