December 4, 2025
Response to News Article Published by L'Equipe
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To the supporters of Olympique Lyonnais:
As must surely have been noticed, I have generally ignored the multi-month wave of misinformation propagated by news organizations in France, which have sought to mischaracterize our efforts to turn an insolvent Olympique Lyonnais into a financially sustainable sporting success story. It has been my hope to ignore the noise in France, enjoy my continued visits to the country that is my family’s heritage, and watch OL continue to prosper under the smart leadership of the football department that I helped to re-build.
I promised that we would return OL back to solvency, that we would return the club to European competition (after a long absence), and that Eagle Football and its shareholders would always support the needs of the club. We have faced incredible regulatory challenges, largely attributable to the decision to terminate the long-standing leadership of OL, but even today, I can say that we have kept our promise. OL is sustainable and well-backed by Eagle Football Holdings, and it’s enjoying its second consecutive year of European competition.
Unfortunately, I am no longer able to remain quiet as the misinformation continues, and today L’Equipe published an article that will spread financial misinterpretation and falsehoods, affecting supporters of Eagle Football, well beyond France. So, as I continue to respect the need for current OL management to present its case to the governing bodies in France, without interference, it is imperative that I address the implications and inaccuracies of recent coverage by L’Equipe.
Link to L’Equipe Article
OL haunted by Phantom transfers from Botafogo: the new case inherited from the Textor era
I wholeheartedly reject the implications of the L’Equipe article. The characterization of our football trades as ‘phantom’ trades is intellectually bankrupt and inflammatory. The player transfers in question were all valid and attractive football decisions, proposed by me, and structured and consummated by our Global Head of Football, Micheal Gerlinger (now CEO of Olympique Lyonnais).
They were not only FIFA-complaint, but they were remarkably beneficial to both our club in Brasil and our club in France. SAF Botafogo would continue to build its reputation for creating player pathways, which has helped us to win multiple championships in South America - and OL should have been allowed to register 3 of South America’s best athletes to push for a 2024/25 Champions League qualification.
There is no longer any accounting uncertainty at Eagle Football regarding these players. All independent review of such numbers has been completed. They were transferred to OL, which naturally would owe installments back to Botafogo. Like any normal transfer, Botafogo would have the right to sell its receivables to a third-party institution, and it did. So, as is normal in football, when OL is directed to pay a factoring institution, it represents nothing more than the obligation of OL to pay for the players it purchased. Just like Botafogo, OL has also been financing its receivables for many years, prior to my arrival, and directing its ‘purchasing’ clubs to pay OL’s factoring institutions.
L’Equipe would make the mundane seem sinister, suggesting that OL is obligated to a factoring institution, without having received benefit. Nothing could be farther from the truth. These transactions have all been ‘net cash positive’ for OL, even after counting the total remaining liabilities to be paid to third-party institutions.
It is also true that the players were proposed to be sold back to Botafogo, as we asked the DNCG what to do in our May 20, 2025 meeting…”Please allow us to register the players. If not, then it’s unfair that our DNCG file and cashflow projections are viewed more negatively, without allowing the sporting benefit of the players that we purchased.”
To be clear, OL deserved to have these players playing for OL, and that was our repeated demand of the politically pressured DNCG. Unfortunately, with multiple club presidents working to protest our in-bound transfers, we were never given an answer to this question, prior to our June 24 DNCG meeting. With ample cash reserves, significant in-bound cash, and a willing and supportive group of shareholders, we were administratively relegated by a DNCG that was determined to force a leadership change.
In the end, the player rights were never transferred back to Botafogo, because without the players’ agreement, the transfer agreements could not be finalized. OL, therefore, retained all economic rights of future sales proceeds for all players that it purchased from Botafogo – and OL was paid cash for (more than) 100% of the proceeds received by Botafogo, in relation to their ultimate transfers to Zenit, Nottingham Forest and Atletico Madrid.
During our times of high-collaboration, which benefited all Eagle clubs, Botafogo transferred 146 million Euros of cash, via direct wire transmittals, to OL accounts, approximately 80 million of which related to the sale of the ‘OL-rights’ players. In return, through our cash pooling approach, OL transferred approximately 42 million Euros at various times, back to Botafogo. Another 23 million of transaction fees and financing costs would be split equally between the clubs, leaving approximately 35 million Euros owed by OL to Botafogo.
These numbers can be upsetting to supporters of either club, under current circumstances, but this collaborative multi-club model of player recruitment and roster optimization helped lift OL from last place, after 14 rounds in 2023, to Europa League by the end of that same season – and it helped Botafogo to offer a pathway for top players that helped us rise from 2nd division promotion to champions of Brasil Serie A, and Copa Libertadores, in 2024…not to mention a memorable win against the world’s best team, PSG, by Botafogo at the Club World Cup.
The only question still to be asked is a question of the DNCG, and it still amazes me that no one else is asking this question:
How can the DNCG impose retro-active sanctions, in January 2025, and prevent the club from rostering players that it already owned, who were purchased fairly between July 2024 and October 2024?
Asked another way, given the unique cash pooling agreements across all Eagle clubs, how can the DNCG say that we can’t afford to transfer players from one club to another, when the net cost to the Eagle organization was zero?
Is the purpose of DNCG to assure financial sustainability, or is it to regulate competition, as the opponents of OL clearly asked it to do?
The rights to Luiz Henrique, Thiago Almada and Igor Jesus were already purchased by OL, before the threat of roster controls…so why could they not play for OL?
What is clear is that the pressure from French Ligue 1 presidents, all good friends of our former OL president, was constantly applied at the league, the FFF, and the DNCG, in an effort to eliminate the sporting advantages of our multi-club model. This would be publicly admitted in the Spring of 2023 by the president of Nice. Finally, an honest man that explained the unexplainable. He said that he really did not want to file the protest, but that he was keeping a promise to a friend. Malicious collusion, in broad daylight, confirmed by a member of the old guard. Ligue 1 presidents were already upset by our rise from last place to Europe League, after one free transfer window, in 23/24…and none of them wanted to see the last half of 2025, with Igor Jesus, Thiago Almada and Luiz Henrique all charging OL into UEFA Champions League.
The only explanation for a retro-active transfer ban, from an organization that claims to care about our finances, would be this sporting explanation – because the DNCG knew that our failure to register the players would be a breach of our obligations to the players, which would allow the players to break their contracts, where OL would lose 100% of the value of the players – a total loss scenario, imposed by a DNCG that exists only to protect the financial health of French football clubs.
Closing Thoughts on our Financial Turn-around
OL was insolvent at the end of 2022, with 100% of its senior notes due within one year, and an annual loss, excluding one-off items (such as the forward sale of media rights) of approximately €112 million. To our surprise, we also learned that the DNCG warned the prior owner in December 2022 that a €200 million investment was necessary to avoid sanctions and/or relegation – and we were punished with transfer sanctions in our very first trading window. We all remember the summer of 2023. We had a relegation squad, and no club had ever escaped relegation with only 7 points after 14 rounds.
With the evaporation of television revenues from the league, and an increase in non-cash amortization, our core operating numbers in 2024/25 are roughly similar to what we inherited in 2023/24. Improvements in several line items are noticeable, based on our return to European competition, but we remained burdened during the year by huge player contracts inherited from the prior regime, which combined with my decision to increase player wage spend to bring players to prevent relegation and return us to European play.
So, my goal was to take an insolvent club, which had not been to European competition for several years, and return it to operating profitability and to sporting success in Europe. We were able to achieve both objectives by the end of 2024/25, as we achieved a near 40% reduction of expenses, with nearly all legacy contracts due to expire by June 30, 2025. The great work of our rebuilt football department allowed us to show to the DNCG that the major drivers of sustainability were all in place for 2025/26, at the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, 2025.
More importantly, we demonstrated forward financial sustainability on May 20, with a significant cash cushion provided by club-asset sales, forward player rights sales and commitments from our shareholders, as well as other contracted cash levers, and we were assured that relegation was off the table, if we delivered the same elements a month later. In the May 20 meeting, the DNCG asked for an additional 50M Euros, but made clear that it was “just an ask, and not a requirement”. I even enjoyed a number of helpful text messages from the Chair of the DNCG during the month of June, as he gave us a warning of problems with UEFA and suggested that Eagle should invest the additional money, prior to the June hearing, to satisfy the requests of UEFA, and those amounts were funded. With an additional investment of €25 million in cash and the sale of a player for more than €30 million, we delivered numbers on June 24 that were better than those presented on May 20.
I can say that I will never understand how we could have been relegated on June 24. I can also say that I will never understand how the severity of such punishment, felt most by the people of Lyon, could have been rendered with so little warning, and with no time to react. This time, only two weeks later, there would be no helpful text messages that our May 20 ‘green light’ would disintegrate, and that the community of Lyon would be subjected to the most unimaginable pain – all because the Chair would later, callously, say that he thought we needed electroshock therapy to get us on the right path.
In the end, I can say that I will never understand that such a decision could be made, but ultimately I do know the reasons why – and I do know clearly who worked tirelessly for this result, as this has become more clear in time. I also know the mistakes that I made, and I am always able to admit such mistakes. It just happens to be the case that the mistakes that are often theorized in the media, based on wild speculation and malintent, are just not an accurate account of the mistakes that were actually made, and this is not helpful to anyone. Occasionally, such reports require the rare response, as is the case today.
OL is owned by Eagle Football, formed with an intent to rely on all of its shareholders, not just me. I promised supporters (and the DNCG) that we would always support the club, as necessary, and we kept that promise. There was never a doubt that Eagle Football would support OL, and the nearly 300 million Euros of cash invested, across only two years, should have been enough evidence to earn trust with the DNCG. Though I was the largest cash investor in Eagle and OL from 2022 through 2024, I always made it clear that I would need our partners to step up and shoulder the burden in future years, and they did that in 2025. As the amounts that were funded by stakeholders in the Appeal were dramatically similar to the amounts we promised we would deliver in the May 20 meeting, I will always be convinced this horrible episode was about ‘leadership change’. I am an American reformist (a disruptor) that was a strong advocate for change within a French institution – an American reformist in France – has that ever ended well? It may have been funny, to the public, as I tried to make light of our leaked owners meeting, but the Cowboy act was not funny at all to the institutions of football, and leadership change was the only result that was obvious. In any case, now that the egos of a few men have been satisfied, I really hope we can move on. The community of Lyon deserves to move on, and I don’t think anyone benefits from misinformation and the re-litigation of the past.
I do love France, I love Lyon, and I am still treated very well by the people of France (even supporters of Lyon) who appreciate the effort, amidst all of the uncertainty. I am extremely thankful for that, and I am extremely grateful to the community of Lyon, and to all who have shown their support.
Allez l’OL!
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July 23, 2025
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Impromptu Response to Comments by DNCG Chairman to RMC Sport
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To the Supporters of football in France:
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As has been clear by my silence over the last several weeks, I have refrained from engagement in the public discourse over how our great club could have been relegated, so that we would have the best chance to reverse one of the most extreme acts of governing body intervention in the history of European football. I have governed myself to ignore the mountain of inaccuracies that have surrounded this story, even when such inaccuracies challenged my character and my integrity, as I have always known that the truth of our shared story would ultimately be seen in black-and-white, and not in the ill-informed words of social media and opportunistic journalism.
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I remain committed to the change of leadership at OL, versions of which I had even proposed internally, well before June 24. It had been clear for quite some time, since my termination of our former leader, that I would face continuous challenges of acceptance of my controversial assumption of leadership at OL, and that this consistent and aggressive undercurrent of opposition would forever be a problem for our club and its supporters.
Additionally, entirely of my doing, at the governance discussions headed by the French Football Federation, I was a clear advocate for reform, recommending a change to a Premier League model of commercially logical corporate governance that would increase the international viability and revenues of French Football. In these panel discussions, I openly questioned the role of the DNCG, a subjective panel of volunteer business people, suggesting its replacement by a set of clear black-and-white rules that followed universally accepted accounting principles, just as we see in the most commercially successful league in the world.
Of course, in retrospect, this was a huge mistake, to believe that this FFF forum was truly a discussion about beneficial reforms. The idea that I would advance the idea of the abolition and replacement of the DNCG, when our club was (wrongfully) in such a precarious position with that same body, was just reckless. I never imagined that the DNCG would depart so materially from accepted principles of "going concern" and sustainability analysis, to render one of the most punitive opinions on the community of Lyon, largely (I believe) to serve the protectionist interests of individuals and force a change in leadership at our club. The Chairman, in his interview, almost says the same thing, that relegation was necessary to change our business model and our leadership. Same ownership, different leadership, that he (Jean-Marc Mickeler) could "trust", as the single most important figure in French football - a DNCG chairman that now justifies the relegation a club and its community, based on his personal feeling of 'trust'.
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In response to the Chairman's interview with RMC, my Instagram comments remain accurate:
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"Revisionist history to justify the punishment of a community, just to satisfy the egos of men. The Chairman uses the unchecked power of the DNCG, to force the change of leadership of a club, discarding reliable and contractually secure cash flows, to impose his personal views of financial sustainability.
Fact: May 20, after seeing our plan, he said "relegation is off the table...50M is an Ask, but not a requirement"
June 24: He counts 240M of reliable cash flow as 'zero' and says we should be relegated.
I was not removed. I resigned for the good of the club, because the message was clear. The chairman, and his friends, wanted the reformist Cowboy removed and there was nothing else I could do to stop their barbaric sacrifice of the community of Lyon. Speaking only for myself, Supporters of OL C should know that your club was always sustainable, and the shareholders of Eagle were always there, it our multi-club business cash flows were insufficient. In the end, as I am an advocate for reform, in front of governing bodies that do not want reform, the leadership change is very good for OL - and your club remains in very good hands."
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Of course, the comments above require a bit of math to justify, and I am sure the math of our original DNCG submission will become transparent in time...but in short, it cannot be possible to be given a 'green light' on May 20, followed by the most extreme of punishments on June 24.
Contrary to principles of 'going concern assessments', the auditors of the DNCG broke from universally accepted audit standards with the arbitrary invalidation of 70M Euros of contracted revenues, 120M Euros of historically proven cashflows from Eagle/Botafogo, 100M Euros of recurring player transfer revenues, 55M Euros of commitment letters of support from respected shareholders, 40M of promised reserves from the sale of Crystal Palace...even the mid-June addition of 55M Euros of cash from a one-time cash injection and the sale of a key player. There is simply no way, in any country, or in any IFRS or GAAP audit, that an auditor would not 'clear' through a 'going concern analysis' with such obviously accessible cash flows.
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If this was truly about 'trust', then it appears (ironically) that we should have always been trusted - because I promised that the principal shareholder, Eagle Football Holdings, would always be able to support the sustainability of Olympique Lyonnais. I promised that the shareholders of Eagle always had the capacity to stand in support, as their commitment letters demonstrated - an in the end, those same promised came true, and Eagle Football Holdings funded the promised funds to win the appeal.
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Promise made, promise kept - Same shareholders, different leadership -
and that's the Truth of what ultimately satisfied the DNCG
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June 30, 2025
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE​
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Eagle Football Chairman John Textor Congratulates Olympique Lyonnais on
Qualification for Ligue 1 and UEFA Europa League
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Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA: John Textor, Chairman and CEO of Eagle Football Holdings, today issued the following statement in response to the decision by the French Football Federation (FFF) to uphold Olympique Lyonnais’s (OL) appeal, reversing the earlier decision of the DNCG, and confirming OL’s participation in Ligue 1 and UEFA Europa League:
John Textor, Chairman and majority owner of Eagle Football Holdings, stated: “I would like to congratulate our whole team at Olympique Lyonnais for demonstrating clearly what we have long known, that our great club in Lyon is financially strong and ready to continue its climb up the tables in France and in Europe. We previously cleared through a rigorous sustainability review by UEFA, and now, under the remarkable leadership of our Chair Michele Kang, OL has succeeded on appeal, in cooperation with the DNCG, to confirm our place in Ligue 1 and in Europa League.”
He continued, “Today’s decision is a vital recognition not only of the club’s current sporting and financial strength, but also of the commitment demonstrated by our shareholders and our leadership team in Lyon, led by Michele Kang. I want to thank Michele, and the incredible legal and financial professionals who represented us with integrity and fortitude, under very difficult circumstances. Lastly, I would like to thank our supporters for their undying love for this great club. These were unbelievably painful days and I am so happy for you that the dark clouds have parted and the light is shining brightly again in Lyon. Allez l’OL!!!”
About Eagle Football Holdings Limited
INSPIRED BY FOOTBALL, DRIVEN BY FOOTBALL…MUCH MORE THAN FOOTBALL
Eagle Football is a sports, entertainment and technology company that engages with a global audience through its portfolio of interests in iconic football clubs and related assets around the world. Eagle Football is the leading shareholder of SAF Botafogo (reigning champion of Brazil and South America), Olympique Lyonnais (historic multi-year champion of France), Crystal Palace Football Club (2025 FA Cup Champion), and RWDM Brussels.
Fueled by our portfolio of iconic football clubs, our passionate, global audience, and our position as a preferred destination for players—our goal is to build the leading football-related enterprise on Earth. We operate on the belief that the audience of a club is always more valuable than the club, and our scalable entertainment and technology strategies are designed to maximize our total addressable market opportunity, far beyond the reach of typical football clubs. Our mission is to create value for our shareholders by being a champion for our players, our clubs, our fans and our communities, and the
magnificent game of football.
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About Eagle Football Holdings Limited
INSPIRED BY FOOTBALL, DRIVEN BY FOOTBALL…MUCH MORE THAN FOOTBALL
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Eagle Football is a sports, entertainment and technology company that engages with a global audience through its portfolio of interests in iconic football clubs and related assets around the world. Eagle Football is the leading shareholder of SAF Botafogo (reigning champion of Brazil and South America), Olympique Lyonnais (historic multi-year champion
of France), Crystal Palace Football Club (2025 FA Cup Champion), and Daring Brussels.
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Fueled by our portfolio of iconic football clubs, our passionate, global audience, and our position as a preferred destination for players—our goal is to build the leading football related enterprise on Earth. We operate on the belief that the audience of a club is always more valuable than the club, and our scalable entertainment and technology strategies are designed to maximize our total addressable market opportunity, far beyond the reach of typical football clubs. Our mission is to create value for our shareholders by being a champion for our players, our clubs, our fans and our communities, and the magnificent game of football.
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Inquiries:
Eagle Football Holdings Limited