French side Lyon looked set to have two U.S. men’s national team players to call on for the 2025-26 season, however recent news could lead to both looking elsewhere for a new chapter.
Lyon has reportedly been relegated to Ligue 2 following a review from Direction Nationale du Controle de Gestion (DNCG) on their financial situations. The DNCG handed Lyon a provisional administrative relegation to Ligue 2 back in November and officially ruled on the club Monday after they failed to satisfactorily improve their financial situation before the end of the 2024-25 season.
Lyon, a seven-time winner of Ligue 1, announced later on Monday that they will appeal the decision from the DNCG.
USMNT midfielder Tanner Tessmann just completed his first season with Lyon after making the move from Italian club Venezia. The 23-year-old made 35 appearances for Lyon, scoring one goal and logged 1,840 minutes of playing time.
Tessmann helped Lyon reach the UEFA Europa League quarterfinals before suffering a dramatic elimination to Manchester United 7-6 on aggregate.
Fellow USMNT player Matt Turner, who is currently on Mauricio Pochettino’s Gold Cup roster, was linked with a potential move to the club. Turner’s parent club Nottingham Forest was reportedly set to receive approximately €8 million for him, opening the door for the 30-year-old to earn consistent playing time elsewhere.
He made just four appearances on loan with Crystal Palace during the 2024-25 campaign, featuring mainly in cup competitions.
However, Lyon’s pending relegation could lead to both players needing to find immediate solutions ahead of the new European season.
this finances/ownership issue may also spin over to palace and knock them out of europe, is the related rumor.
Is that new info, Textor sold his shares in Palace to the Jets owner Woody Johnson (still pending EPL approval). The issue with Europe was two clubs owned by the same owners couldn’t be in the same competition like Leon being removed from CWC because they have the same ownership as Pachuca. It really hadn’t been worried about because Palace hasn’t been close to European competition but then they had their Cinderella run to the FA Cup, then people were like wait a minute. Not sure how RB Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg get around this.
my understanding is linked ownership teams are not supposed to be in the exact same european competition. so the theory goes lyon and palace can’t both be owned by textor and in europa league. kind of like we don’t let the B teams in USOC.
what i read is there is a UEFA meeting next week to discuss it.
i know palace is going to say, he’s no longer an owner, and that deal has been announced, but when does it “close.” for lyon’s purposes he doesn’t have the money until it closes. for palace’s purposes he is still owner until he signs stuff and hands over shares.
They’ve delayed the decision until Monday which seems odd. Sounds like at worse likely decision they’d move them to the Conference League.
also, conference and europa leagues start in like 1-2 weeks. the draws are already done. i know palace gets a bye or two but they have the same time crunch. if the first round of fixtures are already scheduled, do you get to finesse the fact you should be ineligible?
Both Lyon and Palace are already qualified for the group stage the draw for that is not until August 29. Plenty of time for the decision and any appeals that need to take place. I read Nottingham Forest is thinking about appealing if Palace is allowed to stay because they want to be moved up to Europa League.
Milan Iloski making a comeback with San Diego. Always that he had tr talent. 7 goals on the season.
Also keep an eye on 18 year old LB Luca Bombino. Kid looks good.
Hopefully, we’ll see Luca at the U20 WC this fall. This age group has a lot of promising FBs. Tate Johnson who had an assist for Vancouver, Reed Baker Whiting in Seattle, Frankie Westfield in Philly, Peyton Miller is the big name but they played him at LW this summer. Aiden Harangi and Ethan Koehler are in Germany. Who gets released, how many positions you can play will play a role in those decisions.
Iloski with a 4 goal outburst last night. Has 9 goals in less than 300 minutes played. Will be watching San Diego much more closely this year. A lot of young to youngish American talent in that squad. Bombino, Ver Hoeven, Pilcher, Alvarado, Iloski, CJ Dos Santos.
And they have Alex Mighten as well.
-Dos Santos is the one I’ve been keeping an eye on since he’s NT age. His goals allows is 23 and his xGot is 23.4, so basically he’s stopping what he should be stopping.
-Honestly, I didn’t know Iloski was American.
-Glad to see Alvarado back playing, fell off the radar after falling out of favor at Vizela.
re iloski i start to wonder about the quality of scouting when you have a dude with 22 and 17 goals in USL who doesn’t immediately end up in MLS. or when a guy who 4 years ago was cut by RSL does this for an expansion club.
this is part of why i say it matters where you land and how it fits you.
Yep. I thought it was dumb of RSL to drop him. Quite frankly MLS teams need to do a better job of scouting USL. Iloski has a natural strikers instinct and more than enough athleticism to separate. But we shall see how the rest of the season goes for him. And Varas has put a masterstroke in building the roster.
IV: unless they’re on loan, guys just don’t make that jump. Haven’t had much success when going to other leagues either. I’m sure you remember Tyler Pasher who went from Indy Eleven to the Dynamo a few years back. Even Iloski struggled for minutes and goals in Denmark this season. When you look at US Open Cup MLS teams usually handle USL with their backups. Of course Tani Oluwaseyi used a loan to USL, and returned to Minnesota growing into Canadian NT caps and 16g 9a the last year and a half for the Loons.
FWIW – transfermarkt still has Turner at Forest
I don’t think contracts were ever signed. Perri, Lyon’s keeper, still hasn’t found a landing spot and originally Matt was waiting for that to happen.
so the paperwork’s not been done. question is how final is the deal where they can force him to sign it, or contrary, do they beg him to walk and save them cash. intentions unclear at their new level.
when leeds went down they kept some and shed some of the americans.
I believe there’s a transfer ban also included in the punishment so I’m not sure they could even sign Turner if he still wanted to go there.
“Olympique Lyonnais (Lyon) was relegated to Ligue 2 due to severe financial problems, specifically large debts and failure to demonstrate sufficient improvement in their financial situation. The French football’s financial watchdog, DNCG, provisionally relegated Lyon in November due to a €175 million debt ($203.34 million) and lack of a viable plan to address it.”
The decision comes one day after Premier League side Crystal Palace announced that New York Jets owner Woody Johnson signed “a legally binding contract” to buy Textor’s shares. Textor sold his 43% stake in the London club for $254 million.
Lyon owner John Textor, failed to persuade French authorities not to punish the club with relegation to Ligue 2, stating “Thanks to the equity contributions from our shareholders and the sale of Crystal Palace, our cash position has improved considerably and we have more than sufficient resources for the 2025/26 season,”
In October, John Textor’s Eagle Football Group (a family of global football organizations with top-tier clubs and elite academies based in Lyon, London, Brussels, Florida and Rio De Janeiro) revealed debts totaling around $574.85 million, raising concerns about the French club’s financial stability. Textor’s proposal to transfer funds from Botafogo, another club he owns in Brazil, to Lyon in order to cover the debts was denied.
However, Lyon bosses were confident on Tuesday that they would be able to satisfactorily answer all questions and provide reasons why they should not be relegated to Ligue 2.
The 59-year-old John Textor gave a positive assessment of their financial position prior to the decision being announced. “You can see from the contributions of our shareholders, we have invested new capital, not only for the DNCG, but also for our UEFA licensing process. Not to mention the good news of the sale of Crystal Palace. Our liquidity situation has improved considerably,” he told reporters earlier on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, they raised €42.5 million from the transfer of Rayan Cherki to Manchester City.”
Man, I think that appeal will be dead on arrival……I Wonder if they can afford to even pay Tessmann and Turner at their current salaries in Ligue 2 or does that mean releasing them from their contracts on mutual consent or will that become another major “off-loading” issue, as far as contract renegotiations with all players…… as you cannot sell a player to a team he doesn’t want to go to……which can lead to players staying put and demanding what’s in their contracts (but can they afford to pay them). lol Major problems
if i had to guess the players’ fates will have more to do with the real financial state of the place than some legal appeal. this has been in the works since november, and running around holding yard sales to raise money hardly sounds like you were falsely accused of being broke. i can’t imagine they mess up two divisions’ worth of scheduling and ticketing at the last minute because lyon swears on a stack of bibles they have cleaned up their mess.
so, to me, the economics either work or not.
250 m debt from new stadium
100 m debt previous transfers
100 m debt operating losses over recent seasons
50 m debt related to Covid losses (not sure how accurate those #s are came from European football website based in Kosovo)
They’ve brought in 200 m from his sale of his Crystal Palace shares. Another almost 100 million in player transfers. The math almost starts working, but the key is that operating losses line. If they don’t have some sort of plan for that they’re just putting off the inevitable. Of course the irony of, your club is financially unstable so we’re going to take your main source of dependable income (tv) from you by demoting you. I’ll be surprised if they win their appeal.
According to Transfermkt and Capology they’ve also gotten rid of 4 of their 7 highest salaries. That’s only about 17 million Euros but if it helps get you closer to balance for a year it could be enough to persuade the appeals board.
estimates i have seen of their debtload vary from $200-500m. if it’s the high end the moves you described cover maybe 60% of their debt. if it’s the low end they are closer to even.
my point on the appeal is ligue oooooon starts mid august and ligue deux a week before that, and you have to sell and send out tickets before that, make team travel plans, and at a point you just run out of time to swap around lyon and the team that’s taking their place. they have a season to play and the world cup at the end.
that and being punished for being broke and then holding all these yard sales, hardly makes it seem like they pegged you wrong. yeah, i did hit and run your granny, but i came back a year later and handed her a check. don’t send me to prison.
doesn’t work that way.
I mean yes there is some of that planning that factors in but essentially all they’ve sold at this point are season tickets. Single match tickets won’t go on sale for a month. As far as scheduling they would just swap out Reims and Lyon. Travel is a bit of an issue but they’re not traveling commercially so that’s more flexibility. I would imagine there is a set numbers of days for the appeals process written to make sure it’s complete in plenty of time. As I told Striker below apparently the appeals are almost always denied.
Well sucks for Turner and Tessman.
This is a bummer, I was hoping to see Lyon play in October!
Governing bodies over leagues do not mess around when it comes to actual net worth and not assumed net worth
I will panic if the appeal gets denied.
Somewhere I read they almost always get denied.