Whether or not INEOS make a healthy return on their investment in fallen Premier League giants Manchester United remains to be seen, but at the other club owned by Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s company, OGC Nice, there’s absolute carnage.
French football has always been full of uncertainty and there’s always a crisis around the corner somewhere—regular Ligue 1 followers can attest to this. And as the winter break approaches during the 2025–26 season, it’s OGC Nice who are further tarnishing the image of what is an attractive but unstructured championship.
To understand how a club, who have the fifth biggest budget in Ligue 1 and have regularly performed well over the past few seasons, could be plunged into a situation where players are being physically assaulted by supporters, you have to go back to the first few weeks of the season.
Nice qualified for the preliminary rounds of the Champions League thanks to a fourth-place finish during 2024–25, but were swiftly eliminated by Portuguese giants Benfica. The club’s recruitment was immediately called into question and it soon became apparent that there were structural issues as well as on-field problems—namely grave concern over how the club could balance their books.
A net loss of €64 million was posted in 2023 and the need to get some money in saw five major departures sanctioned in the summer—Evann Guessand to Aston Villa, Marcin Bułka to NEOM SC, Badredine Bouanani to VfB Stuttgart, Gaëtan Laborde to Al-Diraiyah and Pablo Rosario to FC Porto. It’s been a downward spiral from there.
