Kylian Mbappe, the owner: This club ‘is not your toy’

The banners appeared one after another — slowly, methodically, a manifesto of indignation unfurling beneath bleak Normandy skies.

“Here, hard work and loyalty are the only things that make legends,” read one. “Before you try to make a name for yourself on the international stage, respect local figures,” hissed another.

A third was more pithy and more personal. “Mbappe,” it read, “SMC is not your toy.”

The ire belonged to supporters of Stade Malherbe Caen. It was directed at the club’s majority owner. Kylian Mbappe has a strong claim to the title of France’s most beloved footballer but, in the Borelli Stand of Caen’s Michel d’Ornano Stadium, there was not a great deal of affection to be found.

Troisième message de la soirée #smcaen #allomalherbe pic.twitter.com/isZ8x3bbwx

— Olivier Duc (@OD761) January 3, 2025

Those protests took place on January 3, during Caen’s match against Clermont. A defeat left the club teetering above the automatic relegation zone in France’s second division. They have since plunged into it, courtesy of three further losses, the latest coming at home to Guingamp on Friday night.

Little wonder that grievances have crystallised further.

“Hi Kylian Mbappe,” read one popular post from a fan on X after the reversal at Ajaccio last weekend. “Sorry to disturb you, but have you ever heard of SM Caen? It’s a little club down at the bottom of the Ligue 2 table. Don’t hesitate to have a look when you have five minutes. Come and see what’s happening.”

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Mbappe’s involvement with Caen began in July when he purchased an 80 per cent stake in the club through the investment arm of his image company, Interconnected Ventures. That stake had belonged to the Los Angeles-based Oaktree fund. Mbappe bought them out for around €15million (£12.7m; $15.7m at current rates), the deal formally ratified on September 9.

Reports in the French media suggested that Caen was Mbappe’s second choice — that he had initially wanted to buy Monaco, the club at which he made his name. Either way, there was at least an existing connection: Mbappe had almost signed for Caen in 2013, even representing them in a youth tournament before joining Monaco. An old picture of Mbappe, beaming in Caen’s blue and red stripes, contributed to a genuine sense of excitement at his arrival.

Le saviez-vous ? Kylian Mbappé a joué plus de matchs avec Caen (1) qu’avec le Real Madrid (0) pic.twitter.com/9nkY2iXMCF

— We Are Malherbe (@WeAreMalherbe) May 21, 2022

So, too, did the club’s recent history. After yo-yoing between the top two divisions for the best part of two decades, Caen came within a whisker of relegation to the third flight in the 2020-21 season. They had stabilised in subsequent seasons, but efforts to return to Ligue 1 had fallen short. The prospect of some extra cash — and a dash of big-ticket glamour — understandably held some appeal.

“There is obviously a Kylian effect,” Pierre-Antoine Capton, minority shareholder and chairman of Caen’s supervisory board, told Ouest-France in early August. “We want to make the club even more professional and help it progress. When you hear him talk about our team, it’s fascinating. He’s incredible.”

The fans, too, began to imagine a bright future. “Honestly, there was excitement,” says Johan Lapoutre, a contributor to We Are Malherbe, an acerbic, supporter-run Caen blog. “We had high expectations.”

Those feelings soon began to curdle, however.

There was no public statement from Mbappe following the takeover and he has still not spoken about the club or his role there. New president Ziad Hammoud — the CEO of Interconnected Ventures and a former director at sports broadcaster beIN  — did not talk to the press until late September. When he did, he spoke of his ambitions for the club, but also about the debts inherited by the new regime. “We can’t lie to you — the club is in the red, financially,” he told reporters. “There’s a huge amount of work to be done.”

That was most obvious out on the pitch, where it quickly became clear that Caen would be battling for survival rather than promotion. They claimed one point from their first four Ligue 2 games, then went on another four-game winless run from late September to late October, culminating in a dire home loss to Troyes.

Mitigating circumstances included an untimely injury to former France midfielder Yann M’Vila, a surprise summer signing engineered directly by Mbappe’s mother and agent, Fayza Lamari. But the lack of depth in the squad, particularly in wide areas, was evident.

Things came to a head when manager Nicolas Seube was fired on December 29. The decision was comprehensible — Caen were on another dismal run in Ligue 2 — but its execution rankled some.

Seube’s association with Caen stretched back to 2001. He made more than 500 appearances for the club as a player before taking on various coaching roles, eventually assuming first-team duties in November 2023 and leading Caen to within a whisker of the play-offs. He is a club icon. He was dispatched in a curt, five-sentence press release.

“It’s disrespectful,” Brahim Thiam, who played for Caen between 2005 and 2009, told France Bleu Normandie. “Is this the new Malherbe? Are we forgetting the history and values of this club?”

Patrice Garande, the former Caen manager, was similarly put out. Seube, he posted on X, had been sacked “without any courtesy, human or professional”.

The fans, too, made their feelings known, not least with those banners raised during the Clermont game, the first after Seube’s defenestration. “The way he was treated was not in keeping with his status at the club,” says Lapoutre. “It broke the hearts of those who follow Caen.”

If the Mbappe administration was expecting a new-manager bounce, it hasn’t materialised. Four matches under Bruno Baltazar — 47, Portuguese, previously in charge of Radomiak Radom in Poland — have yielded a single goal and zero points.

A grand total of six Caen fans made the long trip to Corsica for the Ajaccio game. Against Grenoble, another banner summed up the prevailing mood. “Even with a new coach, donkeys are still donkeys,” it read.

The situation is so grim that a kind of gallows humour has begun to take hold. Supporters sang circus music and shouted “ole” when the Caen players completed passes in the Grenoble match. During an injury stoppage, a couple of hundred people in the Borelli Stand — known colloquially as the Kop — took it upon themselves to celebrate as if the team had scored a goal. It was the closest they came to the real thing.

Those seeking crumbs of comfort might alight on a recent slew of changes behind the scenes. A new managing director and a new head of recruitment have been appointed. Gerard Precheur, technical director since the summer, left the club this month. The impression is that there is at least acceptance that something needs to change.

Some, though, will take more convincing of the merits of the Mbappe ownership.

“There are always positive people who think we need to be patient — that the new owners will be able to show what they can do next season,” says Lapoutre. “The problem is that next season will be too late if we go down.

“It’s like we’re digging a way to the third division, burying ourselves alive in the process. I just hope we find oil down there.”

(Top photo: Denis Doyle/Getty Images)