John Textor has given a lengthy statement on Lyon’s overturned administrative relegation.
OL were provisionally relegated from Ligue 1 in December 2024 by the league’s financial watchdog, the DNCG, unless they got their finances in order.
As it turned out at the end of season meeting – they didn’t – and Textor was facing a world of pain.
In the following weeks he stepped down as club president, handing the reigns over to Michele Kang, something multiple reports claim played a part in the DNCG overturning their decision.
The body’s president, Jean-Marc Mickeler, has since spoken out, saying they ‘built a relationship of trust with the majority of shareholders’, adding: “It is clear that John Textor has not always met the expectations expressed, even though he told us he understood them.”
That statement forced Textor to respond in a lengthy statement on his website.
He wrote: “As has been clear by my silence over the last several weeks, I have refrained from engagement in the public discourse over how our great club could have been relegated, so that we would have the best chance to reverse one of the most extreme acts of governing body intervention in the history of European football.
“I have governed myself to ignore the mountain of inaccuracies that have surrounded this story, even when such inaccuracies challenged my character and my integrity, as I have always known that the truth of our shared story would ultimately be seen in black-and-white, and not in the ill-informed words of social media and opportunistic journalism.
“I remain committed to the change of leadership at OL, versions of which I had even proposed internally, well before June 24.
“It had been clear for quite some time, since my termination of our former leader, that I would face continuous challenges of acceptance of my controversial assumption of leadership at OL, and that this consistent and aggressive undercurrent of opposition would forever be a problem for our club and its supporters.
“Additionally, entirely of my doing, at the governance discussions headed by the French Football Federation, I was a clear advocate for reform, recommending a change to a Premier League model of commercially logical corporate governance that would increase the international viability and revenues of French Football.
“In these panel discussions, I openly questioned the role of the DNCG, a subjective panel of volunteer business people, suggesting its replacement by a set of clear black-and-white rules that followed universally accepted accounting principles, just as we see in the most commercially successful league in the world.
“Of course, in retrospect, this was a huge mistake, to believe that this FFF forum was truly a discussion about beneficial reforms. The idea that I would advance the idea of the abolition and replacement of the DNCG, when our club was (wrongfully) in such a precarious position with that same body, was just reckless.
“I never imagined that the DNCG would depart so materially from accepted principles of “going concern” and sustainability analysis, to render one of the most punitive opinions on the community of Lyon, largely (I believe) to serve the protectionist interests of individuals and force a change in leadership at our club.
“The Chairman, in his interview, almost says the same thing, that relegation was necessary to change our business model and our leadership. Same ownership, different leadership, that he (Jean-Marc Mickeler) could “trust”, as the single most important figure in French football – a DNCG chairman that now justifies the relegation a club and its community, based on his personal feeling of ‘trust’.”
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