Ligue 1: FC Nantes relegated to Ligue 2 after thirteen consecutive seasons in the elite

It was a crucial match on Friday, May 8, at Bollaert, for the 33rd day of Ligue 1. Nantes had to win to stay in the elite against Lens. But the Canaries lost to the Sang et Or (1-0) and are condemned to relegation to Ligue 2.

On the other hand, Lens secures their place in the Champions League next season. After this success achieved thanks to a late goal (82nd minute) from Mezian Mesloub, 16 years old, the Sang et Or reduce their gap to three points behind PSG, who will play against Brest on Sunday.

Lensois and Parisians will face each other Wednesday, May 13, in a postponed match from the 29th day that promises to be decisive.

A nearly inevitable downfall: Nantes is therefore relegated to Ligue 2, a blade they had narrowly escaped in recent years but the result of a risky sports management. The victory (3-0) against Marseille last Sunday offered only a fleeting respite, confirming the slight improvement since Vahid Halilhodzic’s arrival at the beginning of March.

However, the continuous presence of the club in the relegation zone since the 14th day and in direct relegation position since the 21st made this downfall almost unavoidable. From the start, the season got off to a bad start, with the bold and promising choice of hiring Luis Castro as coach, turning into a fiasco. Tasked with bringing back a style close to “Nantes-style play” by relying on local youth players, he was weighed down by a catastrophic summer transfer window, amidst a backdrop of radical austerity measures. The owners’ legendary impatience towards their coaches did the rest, and the experiment ended in early December after just 15 games.

The choice then fell on Ahmed Kantari, equipped with Ligue 1 experience and a solid reference in Ligue 2, but a former assistant to Antoine Kombouaré the season before and familiar with part of the squad.

Casting Errors: Despite a consistent winter transfer window, things got even worse with eight defeats in ten games, before Halilhodzic, the iconic striker of the 1980s who had already had a stint on the bench in 2018/2019, came out of retirement at 73 for a failed gamble. A historic French football club with eight league titles, the last one in 2001, Nantes descends for the third time in the 21st century to the lower tier, where it had just fallen when Waldemar Kita bought it in 2007.

Promoted in 2008, FCN was relegated the following year and had to wait until 2013 to return to the top flight. Since then, Nantes has finished higher than 12th only three times and has often flirted with danger: winning the playoff against Toulouse in 2021, securing survival on the final day in 2023 and 2025. The club has gone through 23 coaches in 18 years under Kita’s presidency, without any sporting coherence.

For some remarkable achievements, like Sergio Conceição (7th in 2016-2017), Claudio Ranieri (9th in 2017-2018), or winning the French Cup with Antoine Kombouaré in 2022, there have been risky choices and casting errors. Far from showing any self-criticism, the president-owner positioned himself as a victim in an interview with Eurosport at the end of April.

Kita, the Misunderstood: “I have some knowledge in football. But people don’t want to recognize it because I am the president… That is my biggest problem. I have an eye (for football) but people don’t want to agree with me,” he lamented. “If I had intervened a little more this season, I think we wouldn’t be here,” he added. There is hardly any talk of the absence of a sports director or a real recruitment cell at the club, or the growing discontent against his son Franck, the club’s general manager – to whom he has given free rein since 2023, but who spends more time in Paris or London than at Jonelière.

The dissent has far exceeded the Brigade Loire, the main group of supporters, silent in the stands since late January, after lamenting in a statement that “FC Nantes has become a running gag in French football, the symbol of a poorly managed club.” While Waldemar Kita has been financially supporting the club for years – he had to inject another 45 million euros this season – he will have to quickly take a more realistic look at his actions, or the future of the Yellow and Green will be very bleak.

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