First excuses from Singapore, then lies from Luxembourg: a look back at Deinze’s double drama

Lied and deceived not once, but twice. Deinze has gone from hell to heaven and back again this season. The club was first let down by its owner from Singapore, then lied to again by its new lender. A double scam that forced the club into bankruptcy. A reconstruction of months of misery for Deinze.

Today the curtain fell on Deinze, but the disaster actually happened months ago.

In August, the club’s then Singaporean owners, the ACA Football Partners collective, were still smiling broadly at the player presentation. They were the only second division team who resolutely uttered the words “we want to get promoted this season”.

In terms of sport, Deinze had also strengthened itself with renowned values ​​such as Thibaut Van Acker and Tuur Dierickx. In the dugout, Deinze even played with Hernan Losada, who brought an army of Spanish assistants to the Dakota Arena.

The belief among the supporters has never been greater than this summer, but what no one at Deinze knew at the time: the Singaporeans were secretly planning their retreat at that moment.

Because, as it turned out, a market crash overseas forced the ACA Football Partners to thoroughly review their resources. A loss-making football club like Deinze had become too expensive a hobby.

The owners had already come to that conclusion before the start of this season, but they still tried to keep up appearances as long as possible. The club or players were never told in concrete terms that there were financial problems, and there was never a clear explanation.

The licensing committee was also fooled in the summer with the promise of an operating budget of more than six million euros for this season.

But week after week, alarming signals emerged: the brewer had more than 50,000 euros in outstanding invoices, the youth trainers were financially neglected, the players suddenly no longer received lunch at the club, physiotherapists left the club, cars had to be returned and even the groundskeeper suddenly saw his lawn machine being picked up because the leasing company no longer received any money.

And then I decided: pourquoi pas? Come on, on y va!

Doudou Cisse

The club was immediately placed under the strict supervision of the licensing committee and was promptly imposed a transfer ban.

From that moment on – we are about the middle of September – the owners could no longer hide and things suddenly went downhill very quickly for the club.

Less than two weeks later, the Singaporeans, who were nowhere to be found at the club, also completely turned off the money tap. This left Deinze without a board, without money and with a burning deadline: the club had to come up with a new buyer three weeks later, otherwise it would be the end of the story.

And an interesting detail: the debts at that time already amounted to more than two million euros.

The fact that the supporters were left in tears in the stands after the next match, because they thought it was the last time, said it all.

Who on earth would want to take over the club in such a short period of time and with that mountain of debt?

Well, that turned out to be Doudou Cissé, CEO of the Luxembourg investment group AAD Invest Group.

After the previous owners left Deinze like a thief in the night, some employees – including communications manager Céline Mawet, who would later be rewarded with the job of CEO – tried to save the team.

In search of a new investor, Deinze soon came into contact with the flamboyant Waal, who, after a few exploratory discussions, decided to put his shoulders to the wheel of the project. On November 6, Cissé simply bought the club for a symbolic euro.

“I didn’t actually know the club, but the more I got to know the situation, the more I cared about the club. And then I decided: pourquoi pas? Allez, on y va!”, he testified in an exclusive interview.

No one in Deinze actually knew what he did or who he was, but everyone was happy for a long time that the end of the club seemed to have been averted.

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Cissé also promised to pay off the club’s debts and thus save them from bankruptcy.

To the staff in Deinze and even in the dressing room with the players, he showed off the fact that his AAD Invest Group is awaiting a capital increase of 75 million euros, part of which would flow to Deinze.

Only: Cissé always refused to discuss the origin of the money. “I don’t want to provide information about resources from others, from my partners,” he kept defending himself.

A writing on the wall? It certainly didn’t stop him from continuing to make promises. At one point he was even waving a document at the club that allegedly stated that three million euros would be credited to Deinze’s account. He also stood his ground in messages to the remaining employees in Deinze.

But as quickly as the weeks passed, the deadlines for the promised payments were also postponed by the Cissé clan.

Neither the players, nor the employees, nor the suppliers received any money. And so the mountain of debt piled up higher and higher. An untenable (financial) situation that quickly drove the club from hope to despair.

The players’ group went into conclave and decided in mid-November to go on collective strike. And the youth academy also gradually bled dry.

“Sorry, I don’t work there anymore,” begins the majority of calls when we tried to call club employees in recent weeks.

But there was no explanation or response from the new investors themselves about the situation. No matter how hard Cissé defended himself, the silence remained deafening when Deinze also became entangled in a legal battle.

On the one hand, there was the licensing committee, which sportingly punished Deinze with double points deduction on top of the transfer stop. On the other hand, the club was summoned before the Corporate Court of Ghent by 3 creditors.

There he could no longer hide behind his words, it had to be proven that he had the financial resources to pull the club out of the doldrums.

But we have heard from a good source that Cissé could not prove the origin of his funds to the licensing committee, which he had lied to a month ago when he gave his consent to the club itself. And the necessary financial evidence could not be presented in the Corporate Court for weeks either.

And so Deinze was lied to not once, but twice. The last time with a fatal outcome.