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Bordeaux owner Gérard Lopez confirms Chelsea’s interest to takeover club

Girondins de Bordeaux owner Gérard Lopez has admitted that his Chelsea counterpart Todd Boehly is interested in investing in the club.

According to a newspaper interview from one of France’s media outlets L’Équipe, Bordeaux owner Gérard Lopez notably confirmed that his club was among the French sides being looked at as part of the Chelsea shareholders’ potential expansion into the French market.

Bordeaux, being one of the most successful teams in French football history have fallen on hard times lately. Having suffered relegation to Ligue 2 last season, they now intend to win their place back into Ligue 1 with the club currently sitting second in the league table behind Le Havre AC.

Lopez, a Luxembourgish-Spanish businessman, took over the reigns of the club in 2o21 after ceding control of fellow French team Lille in December 2020.

The billionaire owner is on a search for immediate investors to help better the club’s financial ruins and see if they could be freed of the debts accrued to them by French football’s financial regulators, the DNCG.

“We have had discussions for a while and some are still ongoing,” Lopez told L’Equipe. “A dozen investors have contacted me in the last year.

“We know that the investment funds that are in Chelsea and other investors in English football are watching a lot of French clubs. We were part of them but there were a lot of options.”

Chelsea have made no secret of their desire to build a multi-club network in the same way that Manchester City’s parent company, the City Football Group has done, and they have made it clear that their primary goal is to invest first in a French club.

“If there is an investor who comes in, we will have to make room. But it’s my club, I would like to see it return to its place and whatever happens, I want to be part of the journey,” Lopez said.

Strasbourg have been linked by the English media as one potential club that Chelsea could invest in but it is clear that they are studying numerous different options.

Bordeaux could be particularly attractive for Boehly and Clearlake given that the club’s fanbase have protested against the current owners, who are widely seen as unpopular having overseen a traumatic period in the club’s history.

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