Few deals tell us as much about what football was, and what it is becoming, as the recent transaction that has seen a second division club based in the Eastern French town of Montbéliard (population: about 26,000) change hands for a reported €7 million.
It is partly that the buyer is Chinese – a phrase expected to be heard more and more in and around European football in coming years. But the significance of the sale that may breathe new life into FC Sochaux, a small-town club that was good enough to win the French title twice in the pre-war years and the French Cup as recently as 2007, lies at least as much in the era that it brings to a close.
Based in the same town as an important Peugeot car manufacturing plant, Sochaux has traditionally been a classic example of a company football club. “A page is turning, or rather a chapter – and a long one at that,” is how Le Monde put it. “Peugeot and FC Sochaux have just separated after 87 years of union.”
Until this week when the Chinese lighting specialist Ledus took over, Sochaux had been a manifestation of the old conception of football – as entertainment/inspiration for the neighbourhood’s blue-collar workers. This role sat best in an age when those pulling on the sacred (in Sochaux’s case, yellow) shirts were primarily locals who would have been working, screwdrivers in hand, alongside their fans on the nearby conveyor belts had they not been born with happy feet.
But this model has been dying for a good 25 years. The assassin? Yes, pay-TV and the digitalisation that has facilitated the proliferation of channels and media platforms we are witnessing.
Now, even comparatively small clubs – whose local fans have been seduced, up to a point and via the same technological phenomena, by the bright lights of Barcelona and Chelsea – can aspire, if they are successful, to a multinational supporter base.
As Ledus’s Li Wing Sang explained in comments carried on Monday by FC Sochaux’s official Twitter feed: “We hope to return to the first division as quickly as possible. We hope to turn FC Sochaux [FCSM] into an international brand to touch numerous markets…We are here for the long term.”
I have no knowledge of Ledus’s international strategy, but it rather looks as though the club’s new role will be a) to help create a positive image for the Hong Kong-incorporated company in France and perhaps elsewhere and b) if results are good, to help the new owner to portray itself at home and abroad as a winner.
If it does well, the club may also of course continue to act as a tonic for the local workforce and the town of Montbéliard. But this can no longer be the sole focus.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.