OL no longer has a sports director since John Textor removed David Friio from his post. For the moment, the Rhone club has not appointed a successor but its American owner is active behind the scenes. His first lead narrowly failed.
In a few weeks, OL went from general chaos to a certain clearing up on the field. 8th in Ligue 1, the Rhone club has finally found its rhythm on a sporting level. Pierre Sage is starting to better manage his unbalanced squad with an overabundance of assets in attack. Enough to forget a little the great difficulties of an extremely poorly managed summer transfer window. Failing to sell undesirables and overpaying for certain transfers, David Friio was removed from his post as sporting director by John Textor. No replacement has been named by the American but it’s not for lack of trying.
Abidal will not be OL sporting director
Questioned by the media FreeFoot, Eric Abidal reveals that he was recently approached by OL to become sports director. Former player of the club but above all former sports director of FC Barcelona (2018-2020), Abidal was not against a return to the Rhône. However, after contacting certain internal managers, he felt that OL did not present a sufficiently solid and stable project for him to become its sporting director immediately.
« I was actually contacted by Olympique Lyonnais. I had a discussion with them. I think it’s a club with huge potential. Now, I’m not sure that today the club is structured in the way it should be to be able to have stability. I think that there is really a gap between the structure of the club and the football part, whereas for me these two parts must be united. Today, I don’t see myself working with OL. It’s not that I refused, it’s that you see you have to be convinced. On what I was able to exchange with people at the club, I am not convinced and for this reason, I decided to decline “, he indicated. His experience would not have been too much for OL even if Barça supporters still blame him for a large part of the Catalan club’s current debt.
