The crisis had been simmering for weeks, under the backdrop of failures on the ground and business outside. Wednesday, March 29, the Angers football club announced the resignation of its president, Saïd Chabane. The manager, and owner of the club at more than 99% and who has held this position since 2011, will be replaced by his son, Romain. Teddy Kefalas has been appointed Deputy Chairman and will have “takes charge of the operational aspects”. His appointment will be effective from 1is avril.
In a terse press release, the training explains that Saïd Chabane made his decision during a board meeting on March 21, deciding “thus to gain height”. He lives a dark season after having been the architect of the spectacular success of the SCO, which had gone from the anonymity of Ligue 2 to a status of solid resident of the elite, and was a finalist of the Coupe de France in 2017 .
Ligue 1 red lantern, Angers SCO has not won a match in the French league since September 18, 2022. In mid-March, he was also shaken by sexist remarks which cost coach Abdel his job. Bouhazama. The latter having been appointed barely a few months earlier to replace Gérald Baticle, dismissed on November 22.
A case that was added to the lawsuits initiated at the beginning of 2020 against the now ex-president, for aggravated sexual assault. Despite his denials, six women who were his employees at the time of the facts denounced, including four at the SCO, have filed a complaint against him and a trial is looming.
“Locked in his role of authoritarian president”
The dismissal of sports director Olivier Pickeu in the spring of 2020 and other collaborators, which earned the club a subscription to the prud’hommes, then the separation with the emblematic coach Stéphane Moulin, the following year, precipitated the inexorable fall of Angers.
Due to serious financial difficulties, the training had also been forced to sell, last summer, a good part of its workforce. This winter, the SCO, already without illusions about its future in L1, has also resolved to let slip two of Morocco’s heroes at the 2022 World Cup, Sofiane Boufal (Al-Rayyan) and Azzedine Ounahi (Marseille), history to save some cash.
At the beginning of March, the ultras of the kop de la Butte 1992 had estimated in a press release that Saïd Chabane “locked himself into his role as authoritarian president, firing staff who disagreed with his methods and placing characters as unbearable as they were incompetent in key positions, provided they were blindly loyal to him”.
On March 12, before a match against Toulouse, in Ligue 1, dozens of supporters had demonstrated in front of the Raymond-Kopa stadium, denouncing the « fiasco d’Angers » and calling for the resignation of the club’s management
Angers SCO remains in contention to obtain the fewest number of points gleaned in a championship season: he who has accumulated 22 defeats, four draws and two victories, or 10 points, in 28 days. The worst accounting record for an L1 team, since the introduction of 3 points for a victory, is held by Lens, with 17 points at the end of 38 days. It was during the 1988-1989 season, the Northerners had finished with three wins, eight draws and 27 defeats.