C’Chartres Football is definitely going through a season like no other. A dark season. So far, the history of the club, born in 2018 from the merger between FC Chartres and Chartres Horizon, had above all been punctuated by adventures specific to many sports associations: rise to National – the objective set at the time of creation from the CCF – missed very narrowly twice; coaching changes, with Jean-Pierre Papin being very well noticed in the media, who remained on the bench for two and a half seasons before joining OM this winter; projects that succeed or not, etc.
C’Chartres Football collapses in Poissy
But, this year, everything seems to be going wrong for the club, despite having nearly 1,000 members. A CCF led since its creation by the ex-international Gérard Soler, who had mentioned a departure at the end of the season before the start of the championship.
After a summer marked by a wave of departures within its National 2 workforce (Colas, Hémia, Soukouna, Louzif, Sidibé, etc.) Chartres missed its start to the championship in the large widths. Only two wins in the first eight days. Far from expectations for a club with a budget of €2.7m, one of the biggest in the division…
The return of Pierre-Yves David, eleven years after a successful experience at FC Chartres, to succeed “JPP”, did little to reverse the trend. Since his arrival in November, the CCF, with an unbalanced workforce, has always been idling: six points in six games.
With these very disappointing results, the Chartrain club flirted with the red zone. A sanction made him dive into it. At the beginning of December, Chartres, whose payroll framework had already been announced in June, was penalized with a withdrawal of five points imposed by the DNCG (national management control directorate), the financial policeman of football. The consequence, according to its president (1), of a deficit of €150,000 over the previous financial year, when the club’s budget had climbed to €3.2 million.
The CCF appealed this sanction. But, a week ago, on January 12, the DNCG confirmed the penalty of 5 points and accompanied it with a fine of €750. A decision which tends to accredit the thesis of financial difficulties, a situation it seems complicated to understand and to live internally.
5 withdrawal points: sanction confirmed for C’Chartres Football
Among the players, Arnaud Archimbaud was thus moved, in our columns, last Saturday: “No one came to tell us that we had lost five points and why we had lost them. We can hear everything, but we would have at least liked to sit around a table, to be explained to us. Without explanations, we make films. Reality is sometimes distorted. »
While the threat of a double demotion, sporting and administrative, which would lead the CCF to Regional 1, level left in 2010, and that the situation of the other teams of the club is not frankly brilliant (2), some, according to our information, are asking questions in the ranks of the CCF and in its entourage. “We were all shocked by the loss of 5 points and there is real concern about the future of the club,” slips a member of the structure.
No comments
These questions were able to be reinforced on Monday evening, the day of the publication of a video posted on his channel. YouTube by Romain Molina, and entitled: “C’Chartres: the most WTF management (3) in France?” “.
The independent journalist, specializing in football, some of whose investigations have already been published in the New York Times or The Guardianmakes serious accusations about the management of the club, in particular against Gérard Soler, without however substantiating them.
Already viewed 56,000 times on Tuesday and widely shared on social networks, the video is making a lot of noise in Eure-et-Loir, as in France. At C’Chartres Football, the president, solicited by telephone by The Republican Echodeclined to comment on this post.
As for the City of Chartres, the club’s main public partner, to which it has allocated a grant of €1.2 million, no comments either.
What will be the consequences? Impossible, today, to know. But this new tumultuous episode will undoubtedly have repercussions on the image of the club and on its future.
(1) The minutes have not been made public.
(2) Two of the three senior reserve teams are also eligible for relegation, the three are in a situation of descent, and no young formation evolves at the national level.
(3) What the fuck (WTF), in English, translated as “what the fuck is this”.
Kader Chehida formally denies.
If C’Chartres Football did not wish to react to the video published Monday evening by Romain Molina on his channel YouTube, the former technical director, Kader Chehida, contacted us by telephone, refuting one of the assertions mentioned by the journalist. “No, C’Chartres Football did not continue to pay the rent for my apartment in Chartres, after my breach of contract effective July 10, 2022. With the delay of the administrative procedures and the one month’s notice, we are arrived at the end of August. After that, I kept the apartment, but in my name and it was I who paid my rent,” he says.
Franck Thébault
