On its flight to Ajaccio for the 19th day of Ligue 2 this Friday, January 17, Stade Malherbe will have time to meditate. He is also flying over the void in the championship, threatened to fall into the National after 40 years of frequenting the first two French divisions. The threat of relegation is already looming. But the year of a takeover by the ambitious Mbappé family even more so. “I'm very afraid for the future of the club,” said Ludo, a young supporter after the pitiful defeat against Grenoble last weekend. Mbappé? I don't know why he's there. We were trying to move up to Ligue 1 and there we are playing to stay in Ligue 2. Mbappé didn't understand anything. »
This Friday, Caen will defend its place as play-off player in Corsica, facing penultimate AC Ajaccio, also in distress. Victory is urgent, because the first non-relegation team is six points ahead. The hole is made. “The Malherbe project is excellence (…) We want to promote our roots both nationally and internationally,” said the new president Ziad Hammoud, a trusted man of the Mbappé clan, at the end of September. His wishes have not aged well. “Ziad Hammoud is a financial profile. We see him at the head of the club even though he doesn't really have any football knowledge,” mocked another supporter. If the ambition is displayed, the strategy leaves one wondering. The club is sinking and, in the eyes of many, also losing its soul.
Former Caen coach Patrice Garande (from 2012 to 2018), now a consultant for Ici Normandie, confides “ [sa] great concern.” “We are losing our identity, we no longer recognize our club, on and off the pitch. » On the eve of the resumption of training at the end of December, the ouster of local icon Nicolas Seube, 520 matches as a player and at the head of the team for a year, sounded like the incarnate illustration of this loss of identity.
“Mbappé, the SMC is not your toy”
“Let the new leaders know, the Malherbe public is not impressed by star names, by hypothetical “international influence” or other flamboyance, thundered a press release from Malherbe Normandy Kop, the main group of supporters . In Malherbe, it is only work and loyalty that make legends. » A prolonged position in banners during the back-to-school home match against Clermont, including this message: “Mbappé, SMC is not your toy”.
Already precarious at the end of the first leg, the situation in Caen is going from bad to worse and is taking on the air of a “circus”, dare some of the club's followers. While the players were betting a lot on the three home matches in January, the first two have already been lost, in a stormy atmosphere. Unknown in France, the Portuguese Bruno Baltazar took his place on the bench and discovered “a complicated moment”. “I knew it before I came. I understand the frustration of the supporters, they are right (…) We cannot waste time being depressed, we must show a reaction. »
In the wake of the defeat against Grenoble, the weed community learned in the columns of Le Parisien of the departure of technical director Gérard Prêcheur, although dedicated to piloting the football strategy from young people to professionals. The result of disagreements with management which ended their collaboration only a few months after his arrival.
-In this slump, the workforce seems disoriented. The players are in the crosshairs of the public: “Some don’t move. There we hit rock bottom and we ask ourselves questions about the desires of the players,” said disgruntled spectators after the setback against Grenoble. Attitudes which also irritated Bruno Baltazar: “Everyone at the club must align with the level of demands of the supporters and the history of the club. It takes a lot more heart because we have to respect the club and the city.”
The arrival of Reda Hammache as head of recruitment and the winter transfer window are hoped to be lifelines. But as Patrice Garande breathes, “what is happening on the ground is only the consequence of the vagueness around it. The effect this team has on me is that it has no objective or ambition.”
“The year of transition”, mentioned by the new management, which did not respond to our request for an interview, could it end in a fiasco, like the painful precedents experienced by other French clubs recently bought by companies (Bordeaux, Nancy, Troyes, Valenciennes, etc.)? The Mbappé clan has half a season to turn things around. Despite the absence of several important players injured or suspended, the rescue operation begins this Friday in Ajaccio.
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