How Blues sparked civil war at ‘feeder’ club Strasbourg

Will Castle peels back the curtain on the volatility between Chelsea and Strasbourg owners BlueCo and French fans

- Will Castle

When Strasbourg were left bankrupt and demoted to the amateur fifth tier of French football in 2011, they were a club in crisis.

Strasbourg are now vying for the Champions League.

Again, they are a club in crisis. At the epicentre of Alsace, a fiercely proud region on the French-German border, there is the sinking feeling that an identity is being lost - extracted from a football club that for so long has galvanised the masses like few manage in France. A string of alleged “deception and lies” has turned Strasbourg into an entity no longer recognised by a vocal contingent of its own people.

The stewardship of Marc Keller, a former France international and one of Alsace’s own, was integral to the club’s rebuild in the 2010s. But instead of being revered, Keller is ridiculed - considered the instigator of Strasbourg’s toxification. His sale to Chelsea owners BlueCo in June 2023 has obliterated any previous goodwill. To the fans, he signed away the club’s soul.

This deterioration was not instantaneous. Keller had actually approached the fans when he decided to sell up. “We said there are only two things that we don’t want,” Alexandre, spokesperson for Strasbourg’s four main supporter groups, who asks for his surname not to be used, detailed to The Independent. “First of all, we don’t want an LBO (leveraged buyout), like the Glazers at Manchester United. The second thing is multi-club ownership. We don’t want to be part of a network of clubs. He said ‘fine’, took our opinion and then obviously did what he did, which was sell to BlueCo.”