President of the Foot Unis union, Laurent Nicollin has been immersed in football since he was little with his father, Louis Nicollin, who helped him rise through the ranks at the Paillade club one by one. During his Senate hearing, the president of Montpellier Hérault SC was alarmist about the situation of his club and more generally about the direction taken by professional football:
“One day, we will end up being bought out by an investment fund, that’s the end of the story. I’m not telling you that it’s my football, I’ve been out of my football for a while. The longer it goes on, the more out of step I am. Will I last three, four, five, eight years or one year? It’s beyond me, a shareholder who arrives with three, four or five clubs. For me, it takes something away that a club is the subsidiary of another club. Even if we say we’re not, we are since there are young players. We’re not fools, we know a bit about football so we can see.
It’s not something that suits me but it’s the meaning of life. It’s the highest-ranking, the richest who buy out those who are in difficulty or who want to sell. I don’t see myself in it but it’s the meaning of the history of football and it may be the case in other sports. (…) It’s my philosophy but I may be a young novice president who idealizes football or sport. Unfortunately, we are increasingly transforming ourselves into an American-style sport and I think that the desire of some to have, like in the NBA or the NFL, twenty or thirty clubs and that’s all there is… We may not see it but we will get there and that may be how it will be. I’m not for it but if someone one day wants to buy my club very expensively, well that will be good for me. But humanly, it’s something that doesn’t suit me. Everyone benefits and I can’t speak for a club that is friends with a president who is Marc Keller of Strasbourg, but I know that it was a relief for him to sell his club because at one point financially, he knew that he would not be able to compensate for the losses.
We, with my brother and the holding company, are still able to compensate but we are almost on thirty million since 2020. We can but we don’t have the structure, the wealth and if we don’t have the TV rights this year add twenty million …Honestly, it’s talking about redundancy but it will be bankruptcy because we can’t put in twenty million every year. We don’t have the financial means for that.”
