Racing Club de Strasbourg Alsace v Sporting CP

Racing Club de Strasbourg Alsace v Sporting CP
Pre-season Friendly
July 20th, 2026

The warm up

As long as the game of professional football has existed we've experienced unpopular ownerships of clubs, but in the here and now not many rank as high in the unpopularity stakes as the owners of the lions pre-season opponents BlueCo. Probably best known on the worldwide stage for their ownership of Premier League club Chelsea, they took a majority shareholding in Strasbourg in June of 2023 and it's fair to suggest that the fans of the Ligue 1 club are less than impressed despite their recent relative success on the pitch. Results are one thing but the identity and soul of the club mean so much more to their fans who feel their new ownership is ripping that away from them. They've even taken their protests to the streets of London pairing up with fans of Chelsea. From the outside looking in, it certainly should serve as a warning to Frederico Varandas and the board of Sporting CP given rumours have long persisted about possible investment into the lions by BlueCo. 

Founded in 1906 they're based in the city of Strasbourg in Alsace. Home to a population of just shy of 300,000, the district in which it's located is home to over a million people which is a handy catchment area if you're trying to attract eyes on to your football club. Given most of my readership is located in the US when I point out that Strasbourg is a city with vast historical roots, they really do having celebrated its 2,000th anniversary in 1988. Whilst in the present day it forms part of France, it has on more than one occasion in it's history formed part of Germany so presumably somewhere in an alternate universe they're playing football in the Bundesliga protected by the 50 plus 1 rule. It's located in the Rhine Valley which is on the eastern border of modern day Germany and is probably most games for its wine growing. 

As a club they've known little major domestic success though they are one of only six clubs to have won all three of Frances major titles over the years, noting the equivalent of the Taça da Liga no longer exists. Their one and only league title win came in the 1978/79 season which was so long ago that even this author was still a little chubby baby in nappies. They have suffered a string of relegations from the top flight pretty much every decade from the 1950s onwards. Like the city itself the club has changed nationality three times. It's inception was under the German Empire as FC Neudorf. Only after Germany lost the First World War and the region fell back into French hands did the club become known by its present name. It then found itself annexed again during the second world war and then became French again. You imagine the players and fans of the club in 1939 would maybe be perplexed by the dissatisfaction of the current fans in comparison. Definitely a stark reminder of how we're all living in very different times. 

The club was founded by a group of local students (again how times have changed) and their first forty years were spent swapping between the German and French leagues. I guess that brings a whole new meaning to the definition of a yo-yo club. They apparently abandoned their first ever match at half time having found themselves 7-0 down. ‘It’s my ball and I'm going home!’ They persisted though and eventually got to a stage where they could compete on something resembling an equal footing although that apparently would take the best part of another three years during which there were a lot of threats to disband the team. Clearly they wouldn't have believed you if you could have told them that one day their club would be owned by an investment fund worth billions. I think as humble beginnings go, compared to any other club I've written about, Strasbourg are clearly winning on that front. Remarkably something must have finally clicked because their 28-0 win (no not a typo) over Erstein remains the second largest ever in German football. So if that ever comes up in a pub quiz one day you'll know who to thank. 

It's current name is an homage to Racing Club de France. Sportinguista's will have no problem with the concept of an organisation which bears the name of the country rather than the city to which it's based. They're probably now best known for the rugby union side Racing 92, though as always I might be wrong. Anyways that's where Strasbourg took their inspiration from. Nicknamed Le Racing, Le RSC and Les Bleu et Blanc, none of which scream of being overly imaginative. 

They play at the Stade de la Meinau more commonly known as la Meinau which seats 32,300 and was opened in 1914. Currently they're coached by Gary O’Neil but by the time you read this he may well have left for Ipswich Town following their promotion to the Premier League. 

They went bankrupt at the end of the 2010/11 season and had to begin life back in the fifth division. Promotion was secured in their first season and quite remarkably by 2017/18 they were a Ligue 1 side. In 2018/19 they won the now defunct French league cup for a third time in their history. The aforementioned takeover by BlueCo came in 2023 and the 2024/25 season saw qualification to the UEFA Conference League where they won the league phase though they eventually lost in the semi finals to Rayo Vallecano. 

It's reported that BlueCo paid in the region of €75m for the club. Last season saw them finish in 8th place, a season which began under Leroy Rosenior before he was given the role of Chelsea coach only to be latterly dismissed from there and replaced by O’Neil who it appears has already had enough. Their record: played 34, won 15, drawn 8 and lost 11, GF 58, GA 47. 

Their ownership has certainly taken benefit of virtually every loophole known to man in the English game from selling hotels and the women's team back to themselves to buying players on seven year contracts to amortise their value over a longer period of time before that practice was banned. As Chelsea continue to attempt to hoover up talented youngsters from Europe and South America they've been left with the issue of where to park their players no longer wanted. Well no, that's clearly a lie because they have the perfect dumping ground in Strasbourg. In the winter window Fofana and Anselmino came in. Last summer it was Chilwell, Sarr, Paez, Samuels-Smith, Penders and Amougou which brings the total to 8 players for one season alone. Twenty nine players left the French club in total over the course of the last season and 21 came in which is one of the main crux's of their fans. They no longer exist other than to serve the needs of player trading for BlueCo. I said several times last season that I hope Quenda has been learning French instead of English because he clearly doesn't look Premier League ready and Chelsea massively overpaid for his services. He could well be joined in France by Essugo who still remains the youngster player ever to play for Sporting CP. 

I certainly have a lot of sympathy for their fans because they're clearly subservient to their London overlords. Whilst having billionaire owners will be beneficial in France given Ligue 1 clubs were all told last season to put a figure of broadcast revenue of €0 on the balance sheet, it is hard to know your true purpose is nothing more than to benefit your sister club who lets face it are hardly reeping the rewards of your labours on the pitch. Every time you develop a yongster in Ligue 1 you're left with the prospect of them being moved to Chelsea and not for their true market value either. Any significant financial rewards will eventually end up on the balance sheet of the London club and any mistakes in the market will basically be moved the other way. Let's be honest the situation isn't that much different to that of Sporting's model. The only real difference is where the funds end up and when we get things wrong in the transfer market, we don't have the benefit of having another side where we can park those players although some may well argue that relationship does exist with Pafos in Cyprus to a certain extent. We've made some huge errors in the last two seasons having let go of Mateus Fernandes to Southampton and Afonso Moreira to Lyon whose subsequent transfers this summer are set to hit well over a combined fee of €100m. Not only have we lost out on a huge chunk of transfer revenue but we never got to benefit from either players talent on the pitch which makes it equally as jarring. We all know that we're going to lose the best talent every season, that's Portuguese football but when you're wasting money on the likes of Biel, Sotiris, Koindredi, Pontelo, Faye, Kochorashvili, Vagiannidis, Mangas and Kovakevic you wonder if it's worth it. Whereas you've lost the two players already mentioned plus Diogo Travossos, Rodrigo Ribeiro and Dario Essugo without ever seeing how they'd cut it with an extended run in the first team. At least we got to witness a full season of Nuno Mendes as a direct comparison before his move to PSG. Mind you I guess we also had to watch Tiago Tomas so be careful what you wish for. Given we seem to be buying no other position than midfielders this summer it does make me fearful for the likes of Simões and his career development. Still all told I guess it could be worse, we could be Strasbourg.