An era may be about to end in French football.

As I write this, AJ Auxerre sit 20th and last in Ligue 1, the French First Division.

There is still time for them to save themselves, but they are three points adrift, six points from safety and the days are getting longer.

I fear the worst.

Relegation would hopefully not be the end of the fairy tale for Association de la Jeunesse Auxerroise, the little club in Chablis country, founded in 1905 by Abbé Deschamps, the priest whose name the club's stadium now bears.

But it would be a very great pity.


The improbable rise of the club from a sleepy provincial town of about 45,000 on the banks of the tranquil Yonne from the French minor leagues to the European Champions League is one of the most romantic tales that the cynical world of professional football has to offer.

With its frugality and its impressive youth development set up, moreover, Auxerre has been in many ways a model club amid modern football's financial mayhem.

Now, more than 30 years after the club first arrived in the top flight of French football, gravity is threatening to reassert itself.

The story of Auxerre's rise is, essentially, the story of two men: Gérard Bourgoin, a local businessman and friend of Fidel Castro, and Guy Roux (pictured below), a manager who spent almost as long at the helm of the club as Castro did at the helm of Cuba.

Attention to detail, a sort of gruff charisma and supremely effective man management skills, rather than coaching ability, were at the root of Roux's success, much the same sort of qualities as have underpinned Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson's reign at Old Trafford.

Managing a football club, he once told me, is "like lions and the tamer.


"When the tamer is strong, the lions sleep; if the tamer is afraid, they eat him."

Under Roux, who departed once in 2000 and again – for good – in 2005, Auxerre became a springboard for some of the top French players of recent times.

Eric Cantona, Laurent Blanc, Basile Boli and Djibril Cissé (pictured below) all spent time there before moving on to bigger clubs.

Khalilou Fadiga, the most naturally gifted of the outstanding Senegal team of 2002, had a spell with the club too.

Roux was also a pioneer at bringing East European players to the west.

Sitting behind his spectacularly untidy desk, he once explained to me how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had played an unwitting role in helping him to add two Polish World Cup players – Andrzej Szarmach and Henryk Wieczorek – to his Auxerre squad in 1980, almost a decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

"That was an extraordinary adventure because they were Communists," Roux said.


"The French Sports Minister was the Mayor of Auxerre, Monsieur Soisson, and the Polish Sports Minister wanted to be on the IOC.

"He needed the Francophone votes.

"Soisson gave him the Francophone votes.

"Afterwards, I went to see him and said you must give me a signature for the players.

"And he gave me the signature.

"They were extraordinary circumstances."

Visiting Auxerre just after the club had completed the French League and Cup Double in 1996, I learnt how its so-called "Army of Shadows", a 600-strong band of volunteers who still did virtually everything right up to making sandwiches on match days, had provided vital back up to Roux's genius.


Not that Roux – who once spent a month as "player number 29 for Crystal Palace" in the English Third Division – considered any task beneath him.

"We had a washing machine that broke down earlier in the year," I was told.

"And he's the one who decided what sort the new one would be."

Is it still possible for a small town club like Auxerre, however well run, to survive at elite level, as money continues to gush into the pockets of its rivals?

One suspects it is getting harder and harder, although if the player development network that took the club to seven French youth cup finals between 1985 and 2007 can continue to deliver – and if those players can be retained for a year or two for first team duty before being sold on – perhaps it could still be done.

As I say, there is still time for the present Auxerre squad (pictured above) to raise their game and avoid the club's first-ever relegation from the French top flight.

But, if they do go down, I for one will be rooting for them to bounce straight back again.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.