Ten months after beating the threat of relegation and possible bankruptcy, Monaco secured another remarkable double victory when they humbled Real Madrid’s galacticos to seize a place in the semifinal of the Champions League and announced that, at last, they have another new investor lined up to help them to overcome debts of more than €50-million.
Rumours that the new man with an eye on a seat in the directors’ box at the Stade Louis II is aspiring Monaco resident Ken Bates remain unconfirmed. Prince Albert, heir to the Monaco throne and unofficial spokesperson for the principality’s troubled football club, has instead lured a more Francophile commercial asset to help.
The splendid 3-1 triumph at the beginnning of the month said as much about the tenacity of the people running the debt-laden club in the Mediterranean principality as it did about the shrewd strategy, tactics, management and coaching of the underrated Didier Deschamps.
The former France captain, a winner of every major honour in the game with Nantes, Bordeaux, Marseille, Juventus, Chelsea and France, is an unlikely hero to find in the glamorous surroundings of the millionaires’ playground, but he has proved to be the perfect foil to Prince Albert’s high-profile pursuit of rich backers and an efficient operator in straitened times.
Dismissed by Eric Cantona as no more than a ‘water carrierâ€, Deschamps’s career suggests something else — a high achiever in every respect (103 caps for France, captain of the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Championship-winning squads and a plethora of club honours) with the tactical acumen to devise a gameplan that may well pose problems to his former London club when they visit the Côte d’Azur on April 20.
The only real shame — as when there were 80 000 applications for the 18 000 semifinal tickets available — is that they cannot capitalise on meeting two of Europe’s richest and biggest clubs in succession.
For all involved at Monaco, it is the biggest frustration. Housed in a beautiful, if small, stadium, surrounded by the apartments occupied by thousands of Europe’s richest tax exiles and streets filled with shops that few tourists can afford to buy anything in, it is a rich irony that Monaco’s recent history is a story of waste and bad management off the pitch and shrewd employment
of resources and relative over-achievement on it.
Indeed, not until this season’s Champions League run is played out will we know whether Monaco can retain their two most talismanic figures: Deschamps, whose exploits are being monitored by Juventus (with whom, as a player, he won three Serie-A titles and his second European Cup in 1996), and Fernando Morientes, the Spanish striker on loan from Real Madrid.
Morientes’s position, in particular, sums up Monaco’s problems. While Deschamps, described by another famous European Cup-winning Juventus star and fellow-Frenchman Michel Platini as ‘needing a bit more experienceâ€, may choose to stay if the club put their house in order and give him scope for his ambitions (he is under contract to July 2005), it may be that, even with a new investor, they cannot afford another year of Morientes.
‘He loves Monaco,†says Prince Albert. ‘If he can, he’ll stay. But it will be tough. He knows he’s only with us for a limited period of time.â€
And if Deschamps goes so, too, it is thought, will his captain, Ludovic Giuly and others. The prince, whose family home in the pink, cliff-top palace overlooks the stadium, has given priceless assistance in the past year. It was through his efforts, in part, that the crisis created by increasing debts between 2000 and 2003 was averted.
On May 20 2003, the French league announced its decision to relegate Monaco for ‘financial irregularities†after investigations by a watchdog. Two days later, Prince Albert led the fight-back by promising to support an appeal against the decision.
His efforts as the club’s investments figurehead led to the resignation of Monaco’s then-president Jean-Louis Campora, after 28 years in office, and the introduction of three prominent new investors — Michel Pastor, Adnan Houdrouge and Marco Piccinini, who set up a new company, Monaco Football Investissement (MFI), to support and save the club.
Pastor had a background in real estate, Houdrouge in sports equipment and Piccinini, once a team manager with Ferrari in formula one, in hotels.
All three became vice-presidents and worked with Prince Albert to underwrite the club. Once they were engaged, Pierre Svara, a 46-year-old professional administrator who had been at the club as a director for six months, took over as president. A new regime began.
‘We had to prove that we had the necessary level of investment, and then the decision to relegate us was changed,†explains the club’s media spokesperson Pierre-Joseph Gadeau. ‘Svara is not really a football man, but he is a football supporter with a background in investment. The first problem was to reduce the costs and to keep the club together.
‘He was successful in that. We did not collapse and we kept going successfully. But a €50-million debt is not something that can be erased in one year.â€
The men of MFI purchased 10% at first and then 34% of the club, which draws some of its modest but loyal support from within the principality, but most of it from the Riviera resorts in southern France that lie beyond the magnetic pull of Olympique Marseille.
The rest is owned by a variety of Monaco interests, according to Gadeau. These, apparently, but not clearly, are influenced by the royal family’s patronage. In the prince’s latest plan, revealed this month, the new investor is understood to be taking 15%. This could give MFI 49% of the club, leaving 51% in the hands of others within the orbit of the royal family.
‘It belongs to the principality of Monaco, but not the government,†Gadeau said. ‘It is not like England, where you have shareholders and one main shareholder, like a plc.
‘The 51% here is held by various entities in the principality, which ensures that the club keeps its identity. The fans’ membership does not add much capital to the club — we are not like Real Madrid.â€
Not like them, perhaps, but good enough to beat them, even with an injury-weakened team.
Yet that night of glory could be knocked into perspective again later this month if, when Monaco return to face the Direction Nationale de Contrôle de Gestion, the financial watchdog of the Ligue du Football Professionnel, once again, they find themselves in further trouble.
Prince Albert’s announcement of a new investor will need to be confirmed before then to avert any threat of another investigation into their affairs as they pursue their first appearance in the European Cup final. —