Lille were close to bankruptcy. This is how they became Europe's most profitable club

Lille beat Marseille before the international break Pascal Pochard-Casabianca/AFP via Getty Images Share full article“The club was almost in a situation of bankruptcy.” Olivier Letang, president of Lille Olympique Sporting Club, is explaining to The Athletic the bleak outlook when new ownership group Merlyn Partners bought the club in December 2020. The financial outlook may have been dire, yet in a quirk of fate, Lille were top of Ligue 1. They went on to win the title later that season, for the fourth time in their history. “This mismatch was just a prime example of this incredibly unique industry,” Maren Schirmer, a founder of Merlyn and a member of the board of directors at Lille, tells The Athletic. Lille was sold to Callisto Sporting, a subsidiary of Luxembourg-based investment fund Merlyn, after the club’s main creditors, JP Morgan and Elliott Management, forced controversial majority shareholder Gerard Lopez to sell his stake. Lopez, a Spanish-Luxembourgish financier, went on to take over FC Girondins de Bordeaux in 2021. They filed for bankruptcy in summer 2024 and lost their professional status, dropping into the amateur Championnat National 2. There have been protests from their supporters against his ownership. The financial situation Merlyn inherited at Lille was a concern. The big, and most pressing issue, was the amount of debt outstanding. “The club was financed by someone with around €200million (£175m, $231m) of external debt at very high interest rates,” Schirmer explains. “So, if you’re in a position that you can’t repay that debt very gradually, it balloons very, very quickly. And the club had €200m that it was not able to service anymore.” In addition to that, Schirmer says the previous ownership had run a strategy where they would buy relatively costly players to try to challenge for the league. They also found Lille had a high number of fees still to pay on transfers. “If you run a football club, your ideal world is that you have more receivables than payables (on transfers),” Schirmer says. “But what we saw in 2020 was a huge number of payables for all these expensive players they had brought. So you had external debts and you had payables. And then to round up the picture, you had a significant salary bill. It just wasn’t sustainable.” One of the new owners’ first acts was to bring in Letang, who previously worked at Paris Saint-Germain and Rennes, as president. They then set about restructuring the debt, bringing their costs down and overhauling the club’s way of working. Letang says Lille had been debt-free since October 2024. “Football is already very, very complicated,” he says. “If you are a club struggling with financial issues, it’s a nightmare.” Just over five years on from their takeover, Lille were named as Europe’s most profitable club, according to a UEFA report in February, posting a pre-tax profit of €94m in 2024-25. That was Lille’s fourth straight profitable year. From 2021-22 to 2024-25, they posted a pre-tax profit of €170.8m, compared to a €266.9m loss in the four years before the Covid-19 pandemic (although they did record a €3.8m profit across the two Covid-affected seasons), marking a significant turnaround. The wage bill fell from €89.9m in 2019-20 to €74.7m in 2023-24. Meanwhile, their wages-to-revenue ratio was 63 per cent in 2023-24, the eighth-best in Ligue 1. Their underlying operating result (i.e. before player sales) was a €19.9m loss in 2023-24. By comparison, PSG lost €232m before player sales. In response, a source close to Lopez, who wished to remain anonymous to protect the relationship, told The Athletic the amount of debt was not dissimilar to that of other clubs in France. They claimed it was not payable and had a waiver from the lenders. They also argued that the value of the team multiplied by 10 or 15 times during Lopez’s tenure. They pointed out that Lille won the championship in 2021 with many players he identified, and that former manager Christophe Galtier praised Lopez for his role. Regarding Bordeaux, they claimed the club was very close to bankruptcy when Lopez arrived and said he had invested €60m of his own money. They argued Lopez saved the club and put together a debt restructuring plan. Bordeaux, six-time French champions, are still playing in Championnat National 2, the fourth tier of the French football system. To begin with, Letang set about trimming the size of Lille’s bloated squad. At that time, Letang says Lille had more than 60 players with professional contracts. He went about cutting that to around 23 or 24 players. He says reducing the squad helped increase commitment and the quality of training sessions, as it presented all the players with a potential pathway to the first team. That boosted motivation and levels of morale. Letang was also very methodical with his squad planning and reiterated the importance of looking after the player as a person. “I can tell you the story of Lucas Chevalier,” he says. “He was in the reserves and it was Covid. So I decided to loan him to Valenciennes in Ligue 2. I did not sign a goalkeeper for years because I wanted to keep the space for Lucas. “If, at that time, I had signed an experienced goalkeeper with good quality, Lucas would not have played with us. It’s a question of strategy, vision, squad planning and how we organise things. We want to create value for our assets.” At Lille, Chevalier established himself as one of the best goalkeepers in Ligue 1 before being sold to PSG for a reported fee of around €40m on a five-year deal in August 2025. Letang also cited the example of how Lille managed Carlos Baleba when he arrived at the club from Cameroon in January 2022 for €400,000. He said it was essential that Lille looked after Baleba from a personal and cultural point of view. “Can you imagine, as a boy, turning 18, from Cameroon, now in the north of France, in January?” he says. “I did not allow technical staff to let him train with the first team during the first six months because I wanted him to be comfortable culturally. It is key.” Baleba was eventually integrated into the Lille side for the start of the 2022-23 season, under former manager Paulo Fonseca. He was then signed by Brighton & Hove Albion the following summer for just under £26m, with add-ons. Baleba has since attracted interest from Manchester United. Lille’s new owners also set about revamping the club’s academy, one that has produced Eden Hazard, Benjamin Pavard and Yohan Cabaye. In the years before their takeover, very few players had graduated from the academy to the first team. Schirmer says it was key to their vision as it helped forge a strong identity, developing players who had an attachment to the club and city, as well as a production line of talent. She says the academy at the club’s Domaine de Luchin training centre, 20 miles east of Lille and close to the Belgian border, is home to players from the age of 15. Lille have around 70 children there, with 35 living on site and attending the private school. In the younger age groups, there are around 50 children — from under-eights to under-11s — who train at partner clubs. For the under-11s to under-15s, also around 50 children, Lille work with a public school that offers a sports focus. The children go to school there while training with the club. They have the same set-up for the girls’ teams. As well as Chevalier, Lille also recently sold academy prospect Leny Yoro for a big fee, in July 2024. He joined Manchester United for an initial transfer fee of €62m, plus a further €8m in add-ons. Player trading is pivotal to their model, but is there a sense of frustration that they cannot hold onto homegrown players like Yoro? “In an ideal world, we would have everyone staying with us,” Schirmer, who is originally from Dortmund, replies. “But, in a world where we’re responsible for the long-term history of this club, it is essential that every now and then, a player goes. “And I think it’s also sometimes fair to the player that when they’ve reached a certain point and you have a certain club calling, you let them go.” The latest academy player who has caught the eye is 18-year-old midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi, who has become a mainstay of the first team. He made his first start in a Champions League game for Lille on his 17th birthday, against Real Madrid. “His development has just been outstanding,” Schirmer says. “He is a key player for us.” Recruitment in a crowded market is also essential to Lille. Letang explains how the rise of multi-club organisations and the ongoing French TV rights saga means they think outside the box. Schirmer estimates that Lille will get just €20m this year from domestic TV rights. By contrast, Aston Villa, who they played in the Europa League in March, received more than £150m in domestic TV rights. “I don’t want to complain,” Letang says. “Our job is to find solutions. We are smaller, we’ve got less money, so we need to be faster, more agile and ready to move. For Baleba, there were many, many clubs who wanted to sign him, but we were more dynamic.” Another recent example was French centre-back Bafode Diakite, who Lille signed from Toulouse in a deal worth up to €3m in August 2022. They sold him to Bournemouth three years later, for a fee of €35m plus €5m in add-ons. “Our core area is always someone who is like a raw diamond,” Schirmer adds. “You see the potential. And you think if you develop him for a year, you can really make him into an excellent football player.” In recent years, Lille have also sold Amadou Onana to Everton for a reported €37m, Sven Botman to Newcastle United for €37m, Edon Zhegrova to Juventus for €14.3m and Timothy Weah to Juventus for €12m. To help integrate their talent, Lille have made efforts to blend the youth with several experienced players, including 39-year-old Olivier Giroud. “In life, there is one thing you cannot buy: experience,” Letang says. “If you want to win games, you need to have this balance.” He says the professionalism shown by players such as Giroud and captain Benjamin Andre, who Lille fought hard to keep in the summer, demonstrates to the younger players the level of dedication required to reach the top. Lille made a solid start this season, but endured a tough January and February, with injuries to key players including Andre, Nabil Bentaleb, Hamza Igamane, Osame Sahraoui and Ethan Mbappe. However, with their injury list easing, Lille are starting to turn a corner again. Bruno Genesio’s side are fifth and two points behind third-placed Marseille, who they defeated 2-1 at Stade Velodrome before the international break. The top three in France qualify for the Champions League. Lille also reached the last 16 of the Europa League, where they were knocked out by Aston Villa. Next up is the Derby du Nord on Saturday, where they have a chance of derailing Lens’ title hopes. Lille have ambitions of their own: to qualify for Europe again and, following that victory over Marseille, they have an eye on third spot. Perhaps most importantly, though, is the owners’ belief that they have created a clear culture at Lille. “When you arrive in our club, you know exactly what the DNA is, what the values are,” Letang says. “That is to fight, to run, never giving up, solidarity.” Additional reporting by Chris Weatherspoon Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Tom Burrows is a football news writer for The Athletic UK. He was previously a staff editor for three years. Prior to that, he worked on news and investigations for national newspapers. Follow Tom on Twitter @TBurrows16