A club taken to the brink by the misrule of an owner who claimed to be one of you, but spent so much time in London that he could never be trusted.
This is the story of a once-proud football name, which enjoyed European glory nights and title triumphs, being dumped into a backwater of the game by the football authorities after it went bankrupt and the nouveau-riche owner gave up his stake for a token sum. Welcome to Ibrox? No. Bienvenue a Strasbourg.
A tale of two cities that knew the best of times, and now the worst. Rangers and Racing Club de Strasbourg used to rub shoulders with each other at Europe's top table, playing against each other in 1997 and flirting with the same foreign investors, as they tried to assemble the sort of wealth that could entice the best players. That money turned out to be a curse.
Now they both share an uncertain future. At least on the pitch, Strasbourg can point to success this season. They are at the top of the table and poised to become champions – the bad news is that this is division five. If Ally McCoist thinks he would enjoy life here in division three, he should talk to Francois Keller, Strasbourg's coach, about the culture shock of dropping down to CFA 2 – the amateur league – after their descent into hell last summer.
The alternative to life in the fifth division was death. Last July, they went into liquidation. Then in the third tier, Strasbourg owed £7million. RCS – who as recently as 2005-06 reached the last 16 of the Uefa Cup – were finished. The French Football Federation were determined to make an example of the club, but after four weeks of negotiations, the FFF relented and gave RCS a reprieve and reinstated them to the fifth tier.
Their then-owner, Jafar Hilali, a London-based French businessman, had angered supporters so much during his two-year tenure that they stayed away from the Stade de la Meinau in droves. However, the RCS supporters raised £750,000 to buy the club and Hilali passed over control to a consortium of fans and the Strasbourg city council for a token euro and left town.
A hard core of 8,000 fans have been turning up at the stadium where Rangers played to a full house of 30,000 when they went there for a Uefa Cup tie in the nineties. Strasbourg won 2-1, and repeated the trick at Ibrox, with David Zitelli netting the winner. Zitelli would do the same to Liverpool in the next round, and Alex McLeish splashed out to bring the striker to Hibernian three years later.
On the Rangers bench in Strasbourg that night was a certain Ally McCoist. He was an unused substitute, as was Francois Keller. A cruel twist of fate, given that the pair are now in charge when their respective clubs are at their lowest ebb. Unlike McCoist, Keller's playing days were not sparkling. That season was the high point of the midfielder's career. He later moved to Fulham for a season, but remained in the reserves before returning to Strasbourg, where he played in the B team.
Perhaps that modest CV has helped Keller adjust to life with the amateurs. He is used to being in the shadow of his older brother, Marc, who also played for Strasbourg, West Ham and France. RCS is in the Keller DNA. Marc was also a sporting director who helped to organise the 2003 buyout of IMG – who were courted by Rangers before ENIC took a £40m stake in the then-Scottish champions in 1996 – by local investors.
"We had one goal this season," said Francois Keller. "We could not afford to fail. It would have threatened the survival of the club. I am happy to succeed, but it is the players who took risks. If we had not succeeded, it is they who would be labelled CFA2 players, 'amateurs'. I thought it would be easier, compared to last season, but the championship was completely different. In many away games, we played in little grounds. We could have gone into anonymity. In St. Dizier, we played in front of 50 spectators.
"Our fans were great at home, they always got behind us. I have been here 20 years. For years, RCS was a club that has attracted a lot of jealousy, but we received an outpouring of sympathy in the early season."
That was when Keller, who was promoted from B team manager, was forced to use the youth team to fulfil fixtures until the council began to drip-feed help with a grant. Yet, even amateur teams need money. The club revealed last month that it was running out of cash and needs a £250,000 injection of funds and the council is in talks with several potential owners.
Then Hilali revealed that he wanted to return as Strasbourg's "saviour", which is as palatable in Alscace as Craig Whyte's return would be in Govan. "It is never good to bathe in the same water twice," said Alain Fontanel, one of the RCS directors, when asked about Hilali's plans.
The former owner lost millions of euros in the RCS fiasco "There are still a lot of projects to develop. Turbulence is an integral part of the genetic map of Racing," Hilali says. "I hope the fans have learned and will eventually soften their position. We are not so different as they think. They should not take my return as a joke."
Racing Club de Strasbourg were French champions in 1979 (with Arsene Wenger as a squad member). Francois Keller's era is hardly vintage, but at least RCS are alive. In a week in which General Motors shut down the city's car plant, with 1,000 people losing their jobs, that is a reality check fans at Ibrox might wish to dwell on.
