Bordeaux: from Champions League to the French third tier in 12 years

Luca Toni and Miroslav Klose cannot find a way through. With the game now past the 90-minute mark, Bayern Munich still find themselves trailing 1-0 to Bordeaux and staring down the barrel of a second defeat in as many weeks to the Ligue 1 champions, this time at the Allianz Arena.

The latest Bayern effort veers awry and the ball is hoofed back up the pitch. Anywhere will do for Laurent Blanc’s men. Hans-Jörg Butt hurtles out to meet it, but Marouane Chamakh latches on to the ball first. Bordeaux’s top scorer rounds the goalkeeper with a deft touch before slotting into an empty net to double his side’s lead after Yoann Gourcuff’s first-half opener. Bordeauxare now well clear at the top of their Champions League group and have avenged their defeat to Bayern in the 1996 Uefa Cup final.

Things were going well for Bordeaux at the end of 2009. They had topped their Champions League group, adding a win against Juventus to their double over Bayern. The team, which boasted Gourcuff, Chamakh and Argentinian striker Fernando Cavenaghi among many others, was well on its way to retaining the French title. What followed over the next five months was a crippling collapse. They fell to sixth place in the league – missing out on Europe entirely – and lost to Marseille in the Coupe de la Ligue final, which led to a summer exodus of their stars and manager.

As sour as that spring was, though, it pales in comparison to the downward spiral Bordeaux have been on in the decade since. Bordeaux are now on the precipice of bankruptcy. Earlier this month, the DNCG – French football’s financial regulator – ruled that the club would not have the means to see out next season. Accordingly, they demoted Bordeaux to French football’s third tier, pending