With three rounds to go to the end of the season, Caen, a French second division flashlight and owned by star Kylian Mbappé, confirmed his relegation on Friday after losing 3-0 at home to Martyrs.
The defeat leaves the Normandy club ten points of the permanence recap position, occupied by Martigues, with only nine points remaining in dispute.
Thus, the Real Madrid star team since the summer of 2024 has no more mathematical chances of staying in the league.
Caen entered the field in the 31st round needed to avoid defeat to maintain their chances of survival, but was already behind in the score after only five minutes.
This relegation ends a sequence of 41 consecutive seasons participating in the first and second divisions, 18 of them in the elite of French football. The club also had a brief participation in the UEFA Cup (former Europe) in 1992/93.
CAEN, based in Low Normandy, is particularly known for producing players such as N’Golo Kanté and Thomas Lemar, who won the 2018 World Cup with France alongside Mbappé.
The relegation also worsens Real Madrid’s striker, after the Spanish team was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the Champions League against Arsenal (3-0 loss in the first leg, 2-1 loss in the return game).
For fans, although the club crisis has lasted several years, the Real Madrid player is not free from guilt.
“We don’t know who they are, we don’t hear them. They don’t even give a press conference, we don’t know what they are doing,” Christophe Vaucelle, president and founder of organized fans Malherbe Normandy Kop.
“Since the departure of Jean-François Fortin (president from 2002 to 2018), it has been a catastrophe, a massacre. It is difficult to assign responsibility to the Mbappé clan; management decisions have been questionable since 2018,” said Lilian Bellet, Caen’s fan and councilman.
The team was relegated to the second division in 2019 and had to be saved from bankruptcy in 2020.
The struggle to return to the first division at any price increased the club’s deficit.
This season, in its trajectory towards relegation, several decisions were made as unpopular as ineffective, such as the resignation, in December, of coach Nicolas Sebe, an idol of the club, when the team was still in the recap position (16th).
Under the command of his replacement, Brazilian Bruno Baltazar, the team sank with seven losses in seven matches.
When a firm reaction came with the nomination of Franco-Armenian Michel Der Zakarian in mid-February, followed by a visit from Mbappé at the club’s facilities, it was too late.
