Three days after the DNCG's shock decision relegating OL in Ligue 2, the Rhone club seems to be in full overhaul. This Friday morning, two ARES administrators discreetly landed in Décines to coordinate a credible response to the DNCG. Objective: save the club at the end of the call scheduled for July. In the boxes, a new management ticket is becoming clearer: Michele Kang would become executive president, while Michael Gerlinger would take over the general management. Unexpected hitch, looking for power.
Michele Kang and Michael Gerlinger ready to replace John Textor
Little known to the general male public, Michele Kang embodies a rising figure in business sport. Classified among the most influential women in Tech Health in the United States, this Entrepreneur of Korean origin acquired the Washington Spirit (NWSL) in 2022, before resuming the reins of Women's OL in Textor the following year. Today, she would be ready to inject funds and temporarily take the head of the Lyon institution … without having never managed a European male club. A first, and potentially an earthquake.
Less publicized but just as strategic, Michael Gerlinger is a heavyweight of continental football. Former lawyer and legal director of Bayern Munich for almost two decades, he supervised some of the largest German transfers in the modern era. Since March 2024, he joined Eagle Football as “Global Director of Football”. If he had to become CEO of OL, he would embody a complete break with the Lyon tradition: the first German figure to occupy such a post since the post-war period.
Crisis in Lyon: Ares imposes his duo to convince the DNCG
OL in Ares' hands? The club on the edge of the Big Bang
All of this is not by chance. Eagle's main creditor up to € 425 million, the Ares Management Investment Fund intends to avoid a massive devaluation of its assets. His presence in Lyon this Friday confirms his desire to regain control. By imposing a “serious and solvent” tandem, Ares hopes to convince the DNCG that a new OL is being born. And that an immediate contribution of € 70 million may be enough to remove the sanction. A commando operation that looks like a corporate putsch.
Michele Kang could become the first woman president of a male club in Ligue 1, and Gerlinger the first German CEO in OL history. For some supporters, already struck by the sports and financial crisis, this strengthens the image of an OL “Privatized”halfway between American franchise and investment laboratory. In the spans of the OL Park, the Bad Gones wonder: is the Textor revolution giving birth to a project even further from Lyon DNA?
