<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Ratcliffe era started with a promising fifth-place finish under Patrick Vieira in the shortened 2019-20 campaign. However, Vieira was sacked by Christmas 2020 as Nice slumped to 11th in the table. Vieira\u2019s assistant, Adrian Ursea, took over as caretaker for the rest of the season before the club appointed Christophe Galtier in the summer of 2021. The arrival of the manager who had just won the title with Lille brought promise, but Nice dropped away again and had to settle for a place in the Europa Conference League . Their demoralising defeat to Nantes in the Coupe de France final in May accelerated an increasingly chaotic period of Ineos\u2019s running of the club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sir Dave Brailsford, the former Team GB cycling coach who now serves as the Ineos director of sport, acted as Nice\u2019s de-facto director general in the summer. He conducted an audit of the club and then set about overseeing their transfer policy. That audit dragged on and \u2013 combined with a spectacular falling-out between Galtier and Fournier \u2013 the club wasted weeks of valuable time in the transfer market and were left scrambling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brailsford\u2019s audit led to the departure of CEO Bob Ratcliffe, Jim\u2019s brother, and transfer guru Fournier. Galtier might have been sacked as well had his old friend Luis Campos not been installed at PSG, essentially allowing him to fail upwards. Galtier had been openly critical of the club\u2019s recruitment before he left, and was apparently concerned about Ineos\u2019s commitment and the calibre of people making transfer decisions. The manager had reportedly \u201clost faith\u201d in Ineos before leaving for PSG.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Nice\u2019s coach, sporting director and CEO all gone, the former Crystal Palace and Cardiff City director Iain Moody was enlisted to aid recruitment. He signed a host of Premier League has-beens. This version of Nice, owned by a detached pharmaceutical company and lacking a true sporting director or smart recruitment policy, was unrecognisable from the precise and methodical outfit run by Riv\u00e8re, Favre and Fournier in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
None of Moody\u2019s signings from England have met expectations. Midfielders Ross Barkley and Aaron Ramsey have jumped between woeful and anonymous, while Brentford defender Mads Bech S\u00f8rensen\u2019s loan spell was terminated without the Dane playing a minute of competitive football. Arsenal loanee Nicolas P\u00e9p\u00e9 and Kasper Schmeichel have proven little more than solid, with Ga\u00ebtan Laborde and Sofiane Diop \u2013 who were both signed from French clubs \u2013 the only bright spots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lack of planning and joined-up thinking left Nice with a talented but horribly disjointed squad this season. With the atmosphere seemingly toxic and the team again struggling in mid-table, Nice sacked Favre earlier this month after a humiliating defeat to third-tier Le Puy in the cup. Despite various missteps by Ineos, Brailsford and Moody, it should be noted that Favre\u2019s pernickety nature also contributed to the ill-feeling in the squad. The fact that Nice thrashed Montpellier 6-1 in their first game after his departure, under new interim coach and ex-Middlesbrough midfielder Didier Digard, is telling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The club remains in limbo, with no new permanent manager in place. However, the arrival of Florent Ghisolfi as sporting director is a positive. He has masterminded Lens\u2019 recruitment since their riotously successful return to Ligue 1 in 2020. Lens beat PSG earlier this month and are now just three points behind the league leaders, so Ghisolfi comes with a lot of promise.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNice fans at the Allianz Riviera stadium. Photograph: Daniel Cole\/AP<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Would Ratcliffe be a good owner for Manchester United? The club\u2019s fans might argue that anything is better than the Glazer family\u2019s ownership, but there is a long way to go before Ratcliffe buys the club. We have been here before. He made a last-minute attempt to buy Chelsea last year and there have even been reports of interest in Liverpool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIneos does a lot of acquisitions,\u201d said Bob Ratcliffe when we interviewed him a few years ago. \u201cThe talent is in many ways the preparedness to walk away from a deal if you want to secure value. That\u2019s quite important to us because we will invest in Nice but, through Financial Fair Play, you are limited to what you can invest so have to make the absolute best of that investment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The complications of multi-club ownership may also affect any potential deal. Nice and Manchester United have never met in Europe but that could soon chance, and Ratcliffe also owns the Swiss club FC Lausanne-Sport as well as Racing Club Abidjan in Ivory Coast. The multi-club model could benefit United \u2013 Riv\u00e8re admitted last September that \u201cif Nice is the second club after Manchester United, I don\u2019t have any problem with that\u201d \u2013 but Nice fans are already weary of becoming a feeder club. Riv\u00e8re\u2019s statement last summer that potential purchase of Chelsea \u201cwouldn\u2019t have changed anything for Nice\u201d helped little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Ratcliffe buys United, the former Paris Saint-Germain CEO Jean-Claude Blanc is likely to be involved. Blanc, who will become CEO of Ineos Sport next month, has a wealth of sports management experience, including two years as Juventus CEO between 2009 and 2011 before he held the same position at PSG for 12 years. PSG president Nasser al-Khelaifi described Blanc\u2019s contribution as \u201cfantastic\u201d upon his departure over Christmas<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having taken two months to even attend a game after buying the club, Ratcliffe\u2019s ownership of Nice can be described as \u201chands-off\u201d. However, his decision-making over the last three years \u2013 although admittedly indirectly via Riv\u00e8re, who remains something of a figurehead president, his brother and Brailsford \u2013 has led to Nice\u2019s continued stagnation. The supposed aim of becoming PSG\u2019s main rivals in Ligue 1 has never really looked like being realised. In the last 12 months alone, Ineos have sacked Fournier, Favre and Galtier, while also sidelining the popular and previously successful Riv\u00e8re.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Less than six years ago, Riv\u00e8re, Fournier and Favre led the best-club run club in Ligue 1, a project that became a model for the rest of the division. The future may yet be bright for Nice, but there has been plenty of change and even some chaos during Ratcliffe\u2019s reign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ice were considered the best-run club in France in the 2016-17 season, when they challenged for the Ligue 1 title under manager Lucien Favre, president Jean-Pierre Riv\u00e8re and transfer specialist Julien Fournier. They were top of the table at Christmas, lost just four games all season \u2013 fewer than PSG \u2013 and gathered an impressive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3295],"tags":[8588,3375,6850,5722,285,11554,7717,10387,11500,8924,6369,169,5110,7160,9331,8908,305,9478,1258,6777,6621,5455,9026,9411,5247,5575,6351,3577,8458,7090,2310,401,12234,10925,13151,9343,5459,9410,492,197,7225,10634,12791,11252,115,10742,7806,7523,8154,8486,1253,1721,5911,4809,11081,13256,267,3805,642,12917,7650,7217,7963,9881,9030,7333,9713,6348,3954,594],"class_list":["post-29297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-sport","tag-abidjan","tag-adrian","tag-aid","tag-anonymous","tag-arsenal","tag-audit","tag-brentford","tag-campaign","tag-cardiff","tag-chance","tag-chaos","tag-chelsea","tag-christmas","tag-christophe-galtier","tag-city","tag-coach","tag-crystal-palace","tag-dropped","tag-england","tag-europa-conference-league","tag-europe","tag-family","tag-fans","tag-favre","tag-football","tag-france","tag-french","tag-future","tag-ga","tag-games","tag-glazer-family","tag-guru","tag-host","tag-ice","tag-ineos","tag-investment","tag-ivory-coast","tag-jim-ratcliffe","tag-juventus","tag-liverpool","tag-loan","tag-lost","tag-manager","tag-manchester","tag-manchester-united","tag-market","tag-model","tag-monaco","tag-moody","tag-nice","tag-paris","tag-paris-saint-germain","tag-patrick","tag-patrick-vieira","tag-pharmaceutical","tag-players","tag-premier-league","tag-president","tag-psg","tag-ratcliffe","tag-recruitment","tag-sacked","tag-saint","tag-smart","tag-success","tag-summer","tag-swiss","tag-us","tag-will","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Sir](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/4616955746483b1f68164a7941595fb84f0dc56e\/587_108_2078_1247\/master\/2078.jpg?width=460&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=f5a1322cb6cd7c109e1b26e2128968c0\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Nice](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/dee4e47041254b764a3f5201bdcc37eac1a1e352\/0_139_4368_2621\/master\/4368.jpg?width=445&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none\")
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