Almost to everyone’s surprise, Vincent Labrune was elected Thursday, September 10 to the presidency of the Professional Football League (LFP) by beating, by 15 votes to 10, the journalist Michel Denisot, the only other candidate and initial favorite, during the elective general assembly.
The 49-year-old communicator and television man, president of Olympique de Marseille (OM) between 2011 and 2016, succeeds Nathalie Boy de la Tour for four years, who had not wished to stand again. He was already on the board of directors of the LFP, where he sat among the five independent members.
The choice of Vincent Labrune, candidate nominated by the administrators of the League earlier in the afternoon, was then confirmed by a vote of the clubs and families of French football (coaches, players, referees, doctors, administrative staff) in general assembly.
In recent days, Michel Denisot, former president of Paris-Saint-Germain (PSG) and Châteauroux, seemed in pole position to succeed Nathalie Boy de la Tour, but he may have suffered from support that may be a little too heavy. . That of Noël Le Graët, the president of the French Football Federation (FFF), could have raised fears of a League that “Would depend a lot on the FFF”, as a club officer had been slipping in recent days.
Show of a torn family
Vincent Labrune has made a name for himself as a communicator in the world of the small screen, first at France Télévisions then at Reservoir Prod, the production company founded by Jean-Luc Delarue.
He set foot in the world of football by becoming the spokesperson for Robert Louis-Dreyfus, owner of the Marseille club in the 1990s and 2000s. Two years after the death of the businessman, his widow, Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, appointed him president of the club (2011-2016). Removed from office by the Russian owner, he has since been elected to the board of directors of the LFP, as a member of the college of independents. Since 2018 he has been working at Moma Group, a company specializing in events.
With the health crisis and the end of the Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 seasons, French football offered the spectacle of a torn family, in particular about the rankings to be stopped.
The unit of French professional football, which was only front, shattered in the spring. And it is far from over: Amiens has decided to challenge his relegation to Ligue 2 in court; the president of Lyon, Jean-Michel Aulas, would claim for his part, according to The Parisian, 117 million euros to the LFP for premature end of the season. The first mission of the new president will be to try to turn this page and patch up all these little people.
