By DAN KARELL
The inspirational story of Luzenac AP has slowly become one of tragedy, one that even Shakespeare would be proud of.
What began with earning promotion into the French Football League (LFP) last May has ultimately finished with the club’s expulsion from the ranks of professional soccer in France, forcing the team to begin life again in the French seventh division. After a meeting in Paris with French Football Federation Noel Le Graet, Luzenac president Jerome Ducros, and general manager Fabian Barthez both refused to be placed in the bottom tier of French professional soccer (CFA-2), and agreed to leave the club, along with releasing every first-team player.
Included in Luzenac’s first team is former U.S. youth international goalkeeper Quentin Westberg, who started 33 games in last season’s memorable campaign.
The trouble for Luzenac, which is based in a town of around 650 residents, began after finishing second in the Championnat de France National, or French third division. Operating on a shoestring budget, they became the smallest club to ever earn promotion to Ligue 2.
Unfortunately for the club, their problems were only beginning.
Due to playing in a small stadium, the Stade de Foix, with a capacity of just 3,00Â people, both the LFP and FFF said that Luzenac couldn’t play in Ligue 2. Late last May, Luzenac had come to a deal with nearby Toulouse to play their home games in Toulouse’s stadium, but the league said they had to approve it.
Despite approving Toulouse to play in their home stadium, the LFP denied Luzenac to play there and also again denied entry into Ligue 2 due to financial problems.
In July, Luzenac filed a number of appeals through the court system to try and gain acceptance into the league, but in early August, Ligue 2 began without Luzenac participating. Luzenac were reportedly willing to settle for sticking back in National, but the FFP decided that they couldn’t remain in that disivion, and claimed they had to start at the bottom of the professional ladder.
As such, Barthez and Ducros decided that enough was enough, and that they will release all first-team players and have the reserve team players promoted to re-start the club in the French seventh division.
Prior to joining Luzenac, Westberg was a member of Evian TG and Troyes AC. He’s a graduate of France’s prestigious Clairfontaine academy, and he’s played for the U.S. U-17s, U-20s, and U-23s in his career.
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What do you think of these developments? Sad to see the fate of Luzenac? Where do you see Westberg heading next?
imagine that, a team from France surrendering.
no good deed goes unpunished.
Totally not fair at all. Just horrible and wrong. Those cheats
allowing a team like this to be promoted to Ligue 2 would be like letting your adult Sunday league team join the MLS.
I don’t get why they wouldn’t let them play in the Toulouse stadium, stadium sharing is nothing new…and what that has to do with being relegated all the way down rather than letting them go back to the third tier is beyond me. This seems like an extraordinarily punitive measure for a club that, according to the article, has done nothing wrong, untoward or otherwise shady.
Should have been more clear about the first sentence of that…what I mean by the “adult Sunday league” comment is that, even though they have the skill and determination to make it in a higher tier league, the club itself is too small to support requirements imposed by the league/FA in terms of infrastructure and minimum attendance figures.
If you truly believe in the Ayn Rand merits myth, let them play above their head, in a tiny stadium, and overspend if they can’t control themselves. They earned the right. They would go up or down or same from there based on performance.
But the pro/rel reality is most leagues have “rules” departing from the myth, dictating what teams at different levels must have, stadium size, seating type, capital in the books, etc. If you don’t meet the criteria, the meritocratic illusion goes away. Your stadium is deemed unworthy, your capital insufficient. If you want to play with the big boys, spend like them. Sounds vaguely familiar but in different dress.
I don’t see how you can mock a team as adult Sunday league when the whole point is they won their way up proving their worthiness.
To make it even more inconsistent and cynical, sometimes they let you groundshare your way out of stadium issues, sometimes not. Falkirk couldn’t groundshare but Gretna could.
Remember Fox Soccer Channel? Bobby McMahon saying the word “Gretna” is burned into my brain and it gives me very bad nightmares.
Sorry I don’t know why I would bring that up… at best you have idea what I’m talking about… and if you do remember… it’s gonna be a long day for you now. Sorry. Seriously. Low blow. Try to think of “Barbie Girl” or something else awfullly annoying but maybe a little bit less. Man I’m the worst.
Barthez had a reputation for being crazy, but the LFP is far far crazier
He was born into crazy, molded by it.
+30000
The LFP merley adopted crazy.
dafuq?!
This is why I can’t take European football seriously. Promotion/relegation? Total Mickey Mouse setup.
nicely done
Mickey DEMANDS an apology! He is FAR better than that load of JACKASSERY !
I do find it Interesting that the face of one of the biggest companies in the world, and the bench mark for animation and theme parks is used as a term meaning that something is not ran well or is trivial.
what in the hell
Only 3000 seats in their stadium? Sounds like a good plan for Chivas USA.
No, the article said 3,00. It is considerably larger. Or smaller. C’mon Brain Guy– do the math!!! If not you, who?!?!
Actually, in Europe, that would be what we understand as 3.00. That really is a small stadium.
+1 I heard they ripped a row of “D-E-F” seats out of a ValuJet plane. Then some clown insisted on having the “E” seat as a single season ticket. I was that clown.
No, comfy airline seats are only used for players in the bigger leagues. These were folding chairs.
It all sounds very French to me.
Maybe a little cadeu to league officials ? Non?
sounds like they have some enemies in the FFP.. way to ruin an up and coming club
“Despite approving Toulouse to play in their home stadium, the LFP denied Luzenac to play there and also again denied entry into Ligue 2 due to financial problems.
In July, Luzenac filed a number of appeals through the court system to try and gain acceptance into the league, but in early August, Ligue 2 began without Luzenac participating. Luzenac were reportedly willing to settle for sticking back in National, but the FFP decided that they couldn’t remain in that disivion, and claimed they had to start at the bottom of the professional ladder.”
WHAT???? What logic is this????
Does Roger Goodell run the FFP too?
+1
Nice work. Probably his French relative.
It almost sounds like something MLS would do!!
They are French. There is no logic.
These two paragraphs left me thinking we are missing something.
I don’t think it was a financial problem so much as they intended to play their low payroll team in this small stadium and FFF wanted a bigger stadium and larger capital reserves — whether expansion was good for them or they wanted to have more money around to pay restrained salaries.
As I’ve said before, many “pro/rel” pyramids have these kinds of rules. Fulham had to play at Loftus Road while Craven Cottage was turned full-seater and expanded. Every few years a Scottish team will earn promotion and then be denied their spot because of stadium size.
I know the capital rules are designed to ensure teams don’t spend money they don’t have, but the better test of that is not capital but rather whether they work out in the black or red. Presumably Luzenac had their books balanced but didn’t want to borrow a bunch of capital the business didn’t need, just to meet some abstract minimum FFF required.
What a bunch os BS though. Really feel for the club and players! What an accomplishment!
I think this is pretty well stated, and it’s another classic example of the tragic dysfunction of the well-meaning system of pro-rel. It just isn’t meant for the game in the post-TV era. Amazingly, there are people who imagine that pro-rel was actually “instituted” to “make the league more exciting” in the latter weeks of the season and encourage people to watch teams that would otherwise have nothing to play for. If professional soccer had been invented in 1985, I might understand this intuition
But it wasn’t, and the current situation shows the unfortuante reality of a mechanism that was once and honest and well-designed idea, which allowed for anybody who could put a team together to envision a path to the peak of the game, provided they had patience and kept winning.
It doesn’t work with this much money on the table. Not close. All of these band-aids will never change it. No league, great or small, is bucking the trend. The penalty is always greater than the reward, and it ruins the competition for quite literally every team, even those who are not promoted or relegated. Unless you are talking about a not-for-profit rec league, it is a deah spiral. MLS won’t touch it. And they’re right… most of these leagues would love to ditch it, but it’s too late in the game.
As interesting as pro/rel sounds, I think you’re right. It’s an idea past its prime.