MHSC relegated to Ligue 1: Is Montpellier condemned to the worst without the hope of a new stadium ?

Ce dimanche, Rennes n’a fait qu’une bouchée de Montpellier (3-0). MAXPPP – Vincent MICHEL

TICKET. By dint of stagnation, the Hérault club is falling back in the hierarchy of professional football. 

It almost seems written. While in the best of all possible worlds, MHSC would meet its 20,000 supporters at the brand new Louis-Nicollin stadium, the Montpellier club is currently just a fifty-something limping on the rim, fed by gloomy prospects, like its defense in tatters, Sunday in Rennes. Sad anniversary. Predictable, despite everything.

The rule applies to everyone, especially in a French football in crisis, whose financial arm DAZN is now begging for discount TV subscriptions: to stagnate is to fall back very quickly, to the depths of the rankings but also to the clamour of the people. A sign that passion is weakening, the specter of relegation to Ligue 2 no longer outrages anyone, as the club is financially suffocating to the tune of a 20 million euro hole in the coffers.

And it is the entire Nicollin group that is catching a cold, impacted by the poor health of the MHSC and a recession all around. “La Paillade” At 50, the celebration could have been that of a second youth, but it feverishly raises the question of survival in the elite of a family club surrounded by the voracity of American and British multinationals.

A new stadium after years of indecision ?

At the local level, we will one day have to confront each other head on: what kind of football do we want in Montpellier, “France's leading sports city” ? In the wake of the Olympic Games of Paris, who shed fantastic light on local table tennis player Félix Lebrun, darling of the French and new ambassador of the City abroad, can the MHSC finally hope, after years of indecision, for a political gesture settling the fate of its stadium project ?
Because the wait is becoming as unbearable as the resignation of a relegation, the president Laurent Nicollin will have to feed on truths, in the absence of hope.

This season does not smell good, symbol of a club tied hand and foot in a decrepit past. It's a fact: Montpellier needs modernity, in order to continue to exist on the map of professional football, which has already seen Bordeaux disappear, a senseless shipwreck. In the meantime, for lack of bonuses, the MHSC will eat m…, and to avoid the worst, will once again rely on the cardinal virtues of La Paillade. One day, this might no longer be enough.