Gérard Lopez comes out of the silence

The Girondins de Bordeaux are still far from being out of the woods. The shadow of a receivership still lurks despite the takeover projects presented in recent days. No offer has yet been deemed satisfactory by the club and its owners. Two candidates were initially selected: that of Didier Quillot, supported by Anglo-Saxon investors, and that of the duo Rigo-Lopez, the two men having merged to combine the local project of one and the support of one lender fund for the other.

The former Lille president, whose management of the transfer of Victor Osimhen to Naples in the summer of 2020 is also in the sights of justice, spoke for the first time about the Girondins de Bordeaux at the microphone of RTL and the newspaper South West. “We are trying to help a club which is really a beacon in the region, but which is today a bit on the edge of the precipice. There is a lot of goodwill around the club ”, begins the Spanish-Luxembourgish businessman on the radio waves, who talks in more detail about his project, in the process formalizing his association with the Club Scapulaire, an organization bringing together more than 250 local entrepreneurs.

Gérard Lopez believes it

“We first want to save a club with an incredible history in French football, a must-see club where great players have gone. It’s hard to imagine Ligue 1 without the Girondins. I discovered that there was a lot that wanted to save this club. This includes the ad hoc administrator, the Commercial Court, Pascal Rigo, Stéphane Martin, the Club Scapulaire, other entrepreneurs… My role was first of all to look at the file, today I am around a table which also includes Fortress. We are now working on a structure that will save the club because the patient is already in critical condition ”, develops Lopez at South West.

Still, his offer was not accepted, just like that of Didier Quillot. “I do not think that today it is only a question of money, but a question of time available and of making something work to save a club”, believes the one who will have to try his luck again if he wishes to take charge of the Girondins de Bordeaux. “It is true that there are enormous operating costs compared to the results that he was able to have”, he admits, convinced of the merits of his candidacy. “I don’t usually get excited, but if we didn’t think there was any chance of saving the club, we wouldn’t be doing it.”