Chronicle of Jean-Baptiste taken from WAM the broadcast of January 10, 2025. Listen here.
BILLET. « The current shareholders of Stade Malherbe have a project, and it is entirely possible to sincerely believe in its seriousness and credibility. Not only because they put a little money into the affair because money has never been proof of credibility or value, in Malherbe, we have known this well since at least Yacine Bammou.
But this project also has a paradoxical side: at the same time it seems very thought out, very thoughtful but at the same time we also have the impression of a form of general unpreparedness. And result: 15 points in 17 matches.
There is clearly a lack of anticipation. Now, they've been here for a few months, before that, they were talking for a few months, it's still been quite a while to start preparing and yet…
So we know what they think, we are fans, we are supporters, we have no perspective, we don't know how it works. But as supportive as we are, they tell us that behind the scenes, we are building solid foundations, they tell us, like the president, that there is no delay on the project but… still, we really must not have enough perspective, because from our point of view as supporters who are obviously a bit stupid, we see that before they arrived, we were fighting for the place of play-off to hope to leave the L2 and there we are to hope to stay in L2. But above all we had a transfer window which started after it closed, which gave a squad with a midfield which is the exact opposite of the president's head: we have everything in the middle and nothing on the sides.
But even if it doesn't show yet, I'm convinced that the project, in reality, is moving forward. The only question is “to where?” “. And in fact we don't know, we have silent shareholders. So I don't know if it's because they think that we can't understand, but about not understanding, we still have the impression that the managers, the shareholders, there are still a couple of things that they did not understand.
What is happening now is not linked to the person of Nicolas Seube. We know him, we also appreciate him for his human values even if I admit without problem that values which are not financial can surprise certain people.
So, what is happening now is not linked to the person of Nicolas Seube, but to what he represents. It is a symbol and a symbol, it has the double particularity of being in a certain anecdotal way – like an employee that you fire as dirty – but also essential. But essential in the first sense of the term, essential, it comes from Latin essentia which refers to the nature of a thing, in philosophy, it is relative to the essence of a being or a thing, what constitutes it. And that’s one of the things to understand here, even if we don’t teach it to you in the Master’s “International Finance and Tax Fraud”.
The guys arrived, with proven knowledge of football. Finally afterward, we don't really know if when we come from BeIn we really know football. BeIn, their job is not about football, it's about buying match broadcasting rights and then finding clients' pigeons to make the investment profitable. If football needs to develop its financing circuits, financing circuits are not all of football.
So some wonder if the Caen supporter might not be a little ungrateful. Ingratitude is when someone does something for you; except that the purchase of this club is not for us but it is for them that they did it. For an objective that we don't know, which is expressed in terms of image interest, synergy, tax interest perhaps, or other but it's not “for us”. The guys – and the lady – arrived with a certain very clear knowledge of football, a very high level of expertise, everything that we don't have, it's obvious but they don't give the impression of having understood what club and perhaps more annoying, they don't give the impression of wanting to understand it.
So, we know that the president is very proud of not speaking every ten minutes, even though there would be a slight nuance between speaking every ten minutes and what we could still quite easily call “hiding”. but there are therefore two questions that we would like to ask him.
The first is “what did you understand about this club?” » and the second is “for what reasons do you think these supporters come to the stadium? »
This kind of project is also a territorial project, because this club is a territory, even if the choice was made to find a president who cannot live there and who therefore has difficulty understanding this territory. This club is also a story, it's a soul, it's a common point between people who often wouldn't have any. We're not going to give you the “Malherbe, it's unique” thing because it's not true, it's not unique, there are plenty of other clubs, with their values, their stories, their ambitions . But these clubs, they each have their own uniqueness, which means that for us it is this one and not another. It's like kids: we know that the other parents have theirs, but for us, it's ours that count, those who are there, Louise, Romy, Anaïs, Luc and Adrien, Colombe and all the others, those who will arrive, kisses to Adrien and Pauline and therefore in football, it's Malherbe.
The question is what makes it so that in Caen, we have guys, we have girls who will go to the stadium. We say Caen, but it concerns all of Calvados, but also friends from Orne, Manche and all those who are even further away: Elise in Rouen, Dimitri, Marie, Jonathan, Christophe, Vincent and all the others in Paris that we cannot all mention, Emilie and Mathieu in Niort, Pascal in Ardèche, Guillaume, Benjamin in Nantes, the Toulouse residents, Julie and Gabriel, Laurent, Idriss, Molkoduforum and again, I'm not talking about those who are even further away like Guillaume in Toronto and those in other countries.
So, dear Ziad Hammoud, dear Fayza Lamari, beyond the fact that you probably won't answer, what do you think makes these people, at least once in their week, “think about Malherbe”?
We ask the question because for several months, we have been promised a bright future, we have even heard of the European Cup. But one thing: the European Cup here, in 111 years of existence, is 180 minutes. The question is “do you really believe that it is the expectation of participation in a European Cup that makes us run? “. Are you really convinced that this is what motivates us? Chasing a European qualification when you are Malherbe is like being called François Bayrou and waiting for a prime ministerial position.
This can only happen in the event of an accident, when no one else is available, when you're already 80 years old and you know from the start that it won't last long.
So, dear leaders, ask yourself: why are these people coming to the stadium?
We could propose a first element of response. In the life of a normal company, communication must offer an escape point, speak of a desirable future. But in football, ours, not that of PSG or Real which do not relate to football but to the entertainment industry, that's not it; There's no point announcing crazy things, including that if we go up, we won't come down. Firstly because in football, there is a huge difference between giving yourself the means to – and there is no doubt about the fact that you give yourself the means to, Gérard Prêcheur he just has the best CV ever seen at Malherbe – but there's a huge difference between doing whatever it takes to get there and actually getting there. Otherwise, if it were enough to give himself the means, Killian, he would already have 2 World Cups, 3 Champions Leagues and 3 Golden Balls.
So, apart from taking the risk that it will come back to you like a boomerang, there is no point – at least here – in announcing crazy things. No, if you want to talk to the supporters – well if you want to – you have to talk to them, not about the future, but about the past, about the history of their club.
Kilian Mbappé will be and already is a legend of French football. But here, it doesn't really matter much because although we live on the same planet, we are not from the same world. Nicolas Seube, he never had the Golden Ball, he never won the Champions League but Nicolas had a trophy that Kilian Mbappé will never have either: the fresh water ball, an absolutely unofficial trophy and which rewards, not the value of a player, but his values.
Nico, It's a symbol because it resembles this club; here, we worry about who can win the Champions League, because what we need is a club that looks like us.
What is happening now is not linked to the person of Nicolas Seube, it is linked to what he symbolizes: the soul of this club and it is this soul which makes us come, or rather that we are still coming.
What managers and shareholders should perhaps think about is this: it is the soul that connects us to this club, not its potential, not its future development. A club, of course, can be bought. Taking it is good, understanding it is better. »
Jean-Baptiste, WAM columnist for the show.