Chelsea vs Lille: A financial crisis and player sales have Ligue 1 winners clinging to Champions League dream

If the next fortnight may well mark the final throes of Lille’s glorious extended summer, the nights are already drawing in and there is a chill in the air.

On 6 February, Paris Saint-Germain, the super-team humbled so spectacularly last season, won 5-1 at the Stade Pierre Mauroy. Ivo Grbic dropped a cross; Lionel Messi pounced on a loose ball; Kylian Mbappe scored with the type of perfect, computer-game finish that makes him the prince regent of football’s next decade. You can fool them once, but know that they will simply spend more as a response.

The most astonishing aspect of Lille’s economic emergency is not that it sees them droop in Ligue 1’s middle pack now, but that they held back the tide for long enough to dream the impossible dream. The club were sold in December 2020 when the extent of their financial crisis could no longer be postponed, but the accountants were giving each other shifty looks even while Christophe Galtier’s team danced on the pitch in Angers in May.

Lille had been placed at the centre of an imperfect storm. The suspension of French football due to Covid-19 cost them millions in revenue. So too did the collapse of Ligue 1’s television deal with Mediapro that always appeared far too good to be true. Mediapro needed four million monthly subscribers to turn profit after agreeing the second biggest broadcasting deal in Europe (behind the Premier League). Maxime Saada, the Canal Plus chairman, had always insisted that the deal was nonsensically ambitious. He was right.

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But then Lille owned their share of the blame. They had become known as handsome payers to players and possessed a stadium they never hoped to fill regularly. The Pierre Mauroy holds 50,000 people and reportedly requires 1,800 stadium staff on a matchday. Lille’s average attendance this season is the third highest in France, but it still leaves 18,000 empty seats.

When Gerard Lopez bought the club in 2016, he financed the deal with loans of €225m (187m) from JP Morgan and investment fund Elliott Management. Last December, they enforced a sale to Callisto Sporting, a subsidiary of Luxembourg-based investment fund Merlyn Partners.

Lille’s domestic triumph was achieved in spite of those limitations. If they did indeed overspend on wages, they proved themselves capable almost beyond any other club in Europe at identifying talent, increasing its value, selling at a profit and reinvesting the proceeds. Between 2016 and last summer, they sold 12 players for more than £10m and two (Nicolas Pepe and Victor Osimhen) for a combined £135m, a profit of almost £100m.

Christophe Galtier was the manager and the head of the family. With a high turnover of players, Galtier understood that he needed to be closer to his squad than is usual. Lille’s stars all privately thanked the manager for his understanding of them as people as well as footballers and Galtier became a kingmaker for young talent. His replacement Jocelyn Gourvennec is not a poor coach; nobody could match up to that predecessor.

Participation in the Champions League may well have saved Lille – qualifying for the knockout stages means European football will generate more than €75m (£62m). It enabled them to escape sanctions from French football’s financial regulator DNCG. It allowed them to refuse to sell Sven Botman and Renato Sanches in January; both were linked with moves to the Premier League.

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But its impact feels more significant than merely financial assistance. The Champions League is Lille’s last fire, the final link to an era that has barely ended and yet feels like half a lifetime ago. Galtier has gone, Boubakary Soumare, Jonathan Ikone, Luiz Araujo and Mike Maignan have gone. The owner has gone. In every other competition, the good times have gone too.

In the summer, reality will bite again. In the summer, Botman, Sanches, Jonathan David, Jonathan Bamba and Zeki Celik will be linked with moves abroad or to Paris and, this time, the club’s new owners may not be able to say no. In the summer, Lille will cement their place amongst Ligue 1’s rest alongside everyone else not named PSG. But before then, at least two more nights. Two more chances to show that they still belong.

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