Lille, crowned French champion Sunday after his victory (2-1) in Angers, had a roller coaster season: if the sporting exploits were linked, the tremors agitated the club, in particular the change of owner just before the truce the end of the year.
It started badly.
Frustrated by the end of the championship last spring, when its good momentum suggested a qualification in the Champions League, Losc finally failed one point off the podium.
He had to be content with the Europa League, before living a hectic summer.
If the departure of his Nigerian striker Victor Osimhen, who joined Naples for nearly 80 million euros, was recorded, that of his friend in attack Loïc Rémy was less and caused tensions at the end of June .
The Campos imbroglio
The trainer Christophe Galtier and Luis Campos, the adviser to the president Gérard Lopez, did not live this outcome. The Portuguese recruiter, cold with the general manager Marc Ingla and the legal and administrative director, Julien Mordacq, has hardly set foot again at the Domaine de Luchin, the training center of the "Mastiffs". This affair had caused Galtier to come out in the press in November: “Luis is no longer there and everything is on stand-by (...) His absence disperses me in my work. It adds a workload that I don't need on a daily basis, ”complained the technician.
Fortunately for Losc, Campos remained active on the transfer market and in particular unearthed three key players in the coronation of Losc: the Dutch defender Sven Botman and forwards Jonathan David and Burak Yilmaz. The arrival of the young Canadian, from La Gantoise against 27 million euros, the club's new record, took a long time to emerge but had been hoped for for months. That of the experienced captain of the Turkish selection surprised more than one and constituted a winning bet. The duo, with the trifle of 29 goals in L1, proved essential despite a difficult start to the season.
From the fall, Lille showed the muscles in L1, like their victories against Lens (4-0) or Monaco (2-1), and also in the Europa League, with convincing successes on the lawn of Sparta Prague (4-1), but especially in San Siro against AC Milan of Zlatan Ibrahimovic (3-0).
What we did not know is that the failure of the broadcaster Mediapro, added to the shortfall linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, put Gérard Lopez in great difficulty, who had taken on debt to invest in the club.
Lopez pushed to the exit
Pressured by his backers, he struggled to find a solution but ultimately had no choice but to sell Losc to Luxembourg investment fund Merlyn Partners, just before Christmas. According to Olivier Létang, the new Lille president, the club was on the verge of insolvency and the new owners injected 50 million euros in cash.
The leader, who had promised that the club would not weaken in the winter transfer window, kept his word and the sportsman remained at the center of the equation, thus allowing a smooth transition. "The new management did not affect the team in the winter transfer window," Christophe Galtier told
AFP
in April. Financial stability has kept the workforce, it's the foundation. And the people who arrived had great respect for what had been done so far. There was no upheaval. ”
It was precisely from February that the Lille players took the lead and put on good results.
Despite an elimination in the Europa League against Ajax Amsterdam (2-1, 2-1), the Mastiffs stayed the course, carried by the goals of Jonathan David.
And when we believed them stunned in mid-March after a home defeat against Nîmes (2-1) costing first place, the Northerners responded by going to win on the lawn of PSG (1-0) in the following match to recover their leader's chair at the dawn of the final sprint.
Despite the uncertainties, the Mastiffs have always maintained an irreproachable state of mind and an unshakeable faith in the possibility of achieving the feat, like their stunning success in Lyon (3-2) at the end of April.
They were right.
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