French Clubs can now be Publicly Traded!

[sl7vk]

http://fr.sports.yahoo.com/31012006/26/football-jean-francois-lamour-ouvre-la-bourse-aux-clubs.html

I don't know how I feel about this............

[gaijin]

Let's call Man Utd to see how not to do it.

[AllezParisAllezPSG]

this is very good news people... the way lamour is doing it is real smart because he will allow clubs to go on the market but not in the same manner as in other countries... exactly how will be specified later this year when they will actually be allowed to go public... but they will be closely supervised, which is something very important...

THIS IS GREAT NEWS PEOPLE! if the clubs follow the guidelines and are allowed to go public in france, this will help us lessen the huge advantages that eng/spa/ita/ger have on us since they have increased funds... and since the system (DGNC) that looks after the clubs finances in france is incredibly strict and that clubs in france have not seen the kind of difficulties we have seen in italy and germany, france is heading in the right direction...

[guignol]

yes, i think that this will be done right. there are loads of restrictions, and it will be closely inspected.

honestly i think it would be better if england, italy, germany etc. came back to our way of doing things, but since that's not gonna happen...

[sl7vk]

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=357054&cc=5901

[sl7vk]

Let's call Man Utd to see how not to do it.
Or Borrusia Dortmund for that matter.

[RandyNA74]

Or Borrusia Dortmund for that matter.
Lazio.

[AllezParisAllezPSG]

"Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas, who is also chairman of a software company and has used his business skills to turn Lyon from a sleepy provincial club into a top team, said going public could allow it to raise up to 40 million euros"

The French league is regarded as one of the least attractive in Europe and clubs struggle to stop their best players from switching to richer foreign clubs offering better salaries. :(

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=soccer&id=2313759

[astabooty]

honestly i think it would be better if england, italy, germany etc. came back to our way of doing things, but since that's not gonna happen...

couldn't be said enuff.

[sl7vk]

The French league is regarded as one of the least attractive in Europe and clubs struggle to stop their best players from switching to richer foreign clubs offering better salaries. :(

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=soccer&id=2313759

Worst line I've seen in a while.... It's what happens when you get non soccer analysts to write articles. Idiots.

[SportBoy333]

Aulas is protesting the ruling and he is uspet.

http://news.maxifoot.com/info-046917_60202/football-138909305376474a0.php

[guignol]

he's not really wrong; it is strange that the most successful clubs in france are still not technically able to benefit from the decision, which he otherwise welcomes.

the sports ministry has opened up the principle of listing clubs in the stock market; the mechanisms and procedures are still under consideration and JMA, ever the shrewd businessman, is jockeying to get the best arrangement possible.

[ilv2]

the fat guy on 100% foot was not very pleased.

actually i don't think any of them were very positive about it.

[SportBoy333]

Looks like the French teams get screwed again. Aulas will not give up the fight to help his team and the others.

[AllezParisAllezPSG]

this is a little article from lequipe.fr about thierez comments today on diff subjects concerning french football... hopefully some of you understand it...

Foot - L1 : Thiriez s'attaque aux stades

Dans un long entretien paru jeudi dans "L'Equipe", le président de la Ligue Frédéric Thiriez annonce que la modernisation des stades des clubs professionnels sera la priorité de la deuxième partie de sa son mandat, qui prend fin en 2008. «En matière de compétitivité, la France possédait trois handicaps : les droits audiovisuels, la législation et les stades, énumère-t-il. Le premier est comblé et le deuxième en voie de l'être. Restent les stades. Leur modernisation doit permettre à notre football d'augmenter ses recettes aux guichets et d'être moins dépendant des télés. Seulement, nous avons un retard considérable par rapport à nos voisins. Nous sommes exactement à la moitié des Anglais en termes de capacité et de fréquentation. (...) Je suis allé récemment au Philips Stadion, à Eindhoven. J'ai eu l'impression d'entrer à l'opéra. Il est anormal qu'aucun stade de L1 ne puisse accueillir une finale de Ligue des champions. J'ai honte. Les collectivités locales ne veulent plus investir dans les stades. Il faut donc trouver des financements privés.»

Sur ce point, Frédéric Thiriez considère que l'annonce de Jean-François Lamour, la semaine dernière, sur l'accès à la Bourse pour les clubs professionnels est un pas en avant. «La France est le seul pays de l'Union européenne où les clubs n'ont pas le droit de faire appel à l'épargne publique. C'est une anomalie», juge-t-il en soulignant l'extrême transparence impliquée par cet exercice. La modernisation des stades s'accompagnerait par ailleurs, selon le patron de la Ligue, d'une modernisation des pelouses. «Qu'on le veuille ou non, l'avenir est aux pelouses synthétiques, tranche Frédéric Thiriez quelques jours après le repos de six matches de L1 en raison de conditions de jeu dégradées par le froid. Dans deux ou trois ans, on y viendra. En attendant, on peut trouver des solutions pour garder des terrains praticables grâce au chauffage et aux bâches. Mais c'est du bricolage.»

Enfin, le président de la LFP salue tous les présidents de club pour la santé financière du football français. «Je viens d'apprendre que la D1 italienne affiche 400ME de pertes au 30 juin 2005, Chelsea à lui tout seul, 204 ME. La France présente un peu moins de 30 ME de pertes pour la L1. Je demande que l'on médite ces chiffres et qu'on arrête de me "gonfler" avec le déficit des clubs français, d'autant qu'au 30 juin 2006, la L 1 sera à l'équilibre.»

he basically mentions the new goals he has set over the last 2 yrs of his precendency... he says france has 3 handicaps, 1) tv rights, 2) legislation and 3) its stadiums...
the first one has been dealt with since canal + is now paying 600 million euros a year for its rights... only in england are tv rights more expensive...
the second one is on its way to being resolved (with the recent priviledge of french clubs to go public)...
he says france is way behind compared to its neighbours... capacities and avg crowds at games stand at about half of that in england... he said he recently went to the philips stadium in eindhoven and says it is outrageous that no ligue 1 stadium can welcome the champions league final and that private financing is the best solution since public financing has not been doing enough...
he also said he was happy w/ the new law allowing french clubs to go public since france was the only country in the EU to not allow them to do so... but he also says an effort will be put to do a better job with the pitch and says that synthetic fields are the future... in 2 to 3 years, the fields will be all synthtic which will help resolve the recent problems of cancelled games due to frost...

some good news though, thierez wanted to salute french clubs for their healthy financial condition... la serie a just reported over 300 million euros in losses and chelsea (won't matter due to mr. russian man) alone reported losses of 204 million euros... the french ligue 1 though reported only a 30 million euros loss last year and this year (2006), ligue 1 will break even!

hope that helps... bright future ahead... allez paris

[guignol]

i was thinking of posting this yesterday but didn't have the time to translate like APAPSG did. thanks!

the pitch problem is considerable. but the problem is more than frost lots of L1 pitches were horrendous this year even before winter, including gerland, the SdF, and louis II, where there are really NO excuses as concerns the weather! last year caen and i believe nice were worse than cow pastures, they were more like plowed fields. with proper pitches we'd still have abidal and RVR playing right now!

artificial surfaces can be very good but there could be big improvements even with natural grass.

and a note about the 30M€ shortfall: more than half of it is for PSG ;) . but it all has to be made good before closing the books on the year (if C+ can pay 600M€ for TV rights this is chicken feed right?). the chelsea (and real, barça, MU, newcastle, juventus....) cases are different. the 200M€ hole chelsea's in is not their operating loss for 2005, which is "only" about 75M€. it's their total debt, which they can just blithely carry on from year to year until they do a borussia. neither good business practice nor sporting. :mad: