OGC Nice presented its new president at a press conference this afternoon. Gauthier Ganaye officially takes over from Jean-Pierre Rivère. Claude Li will assist him as general manager.
Appointed by Chien Lee – chairman of the club’s supervisory board – this afternoon, just two hours after arriving in Nice, Gauthier Ganaye experienced an emotional day on Friday. He flew to Lille in the afternoon, where he could attend his team’s first match.
Gauthier Ganaye held the position of general manager at Barnsley (English third division) for a year and a half. A native of Nord Pas-De-Calais, the new president of the Gym – 30 years old – honed his skills at RC Lens as a legal director and then as a general secretary.
Close to Gervais Martel, he joined Barnsley in the summer of 2017, where he became the youngest president of an English club and also the first Frenchman in the role. He thus leaves Barnsley, 3rd in League One (D3), to join OGC Nice.
“I am delighted to join Nice, which I consider a very great French club,” he said to the press. “The first thing to do will be to reassure people and bring together all the components of the club. Then we will have to work on the next transfer window with Patrick Vieira.”
“(…) We talked a lot about player trading. It is not a dirty word. It is the primary source of revenue for clubs. The goal will be to convert the sporting success of the Gym into revenue so that we are less dependent on this trading. It doesn’t mean there won’t be older players. It’s a system that has already been in place at OGC Nice for many years. We will continue down this path.”
