The merger between Paris FC and Juvisy is clear with including a statement from Juvisy that formalizes the rapprochement between the two clubs. A merger project that would be finalized in the coming weeks and on which we looked with the lighting of Pascal Gouzenes, technical director of FCF Juvisy.

The announcement of the planned merger between Paris FC and Juvisy seemed to raise more questions than enthusiasm. Questions because this union between two emblematic football clubs in Ile-de-France questions the future of one of the oldest and most prestigious football teams in France.

Was there a choice?
Yet difficult not to see the logic at work. In a D1 promised a future dominated by professional clubs, what place remains for clubs 100% female or backed by male amateur clubs? For Soyaux, Albi, Rodez, the issue is that of keeping in the elite, for Juvisy it is also the possibility of being able in the near future to mingle again with titles races and Europe.

This season is particularly telling with a team of Juvisy won the top three, with Montpellier, OL and PSG, three teams related to pros clubs while the team of Essonne struggling to keep pace. As a passenger sign or a widening gap, Juvisy finds himself facing the limits of his model and the need to adapt to continue to play the leading roles.

Ile-de-France finally has few professional men's clubs. Apart from the PSG, we can mention the Red Star (Ligue 2), Créteil-Lusitanos (National) and Paris FC (National). In Essonne, two men's clubs, FC Fleury and ES Viry-Chatillon play in CFA and are amateur clubs. For Juvisy, the choice then went through the need to leave the Essonne to find a partner.

On the side of Paris FC, despite the relegation to National, the ambition remains for the club management to build a team that can in the medium term evolve in Ligue 1. An objective that explains the great resources put in place by the club, today largest budget of National (5 million euros) and the presence among the partners of the group Vinci.

"Find a professional club but with the same values ​​as us"
On paper it is therefore a solid association even if Juvisy sportingly has nothing to envy to his future partner. A merger project that we discussed with Pascal Gouzenes, technical director of Juvisy and in charge of training at the club of Essonne. According to him, this merger responds to the need to continue the "development" of the club, "to be able to stay at the highest level [and] be a training club".

From his point of view, one of the issues was precisely to be able to keep this "identity" training club and work with a training that shares this approach and that is close to the "values" and "ideas" of the Juv ' .

Pascal Gouzenes also insisted that the new club would retain its anchorage in Essonne. The "women's football" part would be distributed on the different sites of the new club, in Paris and in Essonne but that the "best girls of the region" would evolve in the 91, in particular for the part formation where they would continue to pass by the current training center of the club in partnership with the high school Jean-Pierre Timbaud in Brétigny-sur-Orge.

Several sites, because the merger could be two or three clubs based on discussions currently underway between Paris FC and Racing 92 which could also be part of the new club. Discussions that should be finalized at the end of March for launching next season. Like Paris FC, Racing also has a women's team. She currently plays in the Honor Division (DHR for the Paris FC team). All these teams would then be merged into the same club with the "elite of women's football" that would be in Essonne.

Help Juvisy to organize
To make such an organization functional, Pascal Gouzenes recognizes that it will take "people to coordinate all this" and that the mode of operation of a women's club spread over several sites remains to be built. The goal for the women's section of the future is to be able to "drain" a larger number of players. In this way, the new club could "mount" its "number of licensees" and among them can accompany those who could reach the highest level.

For Juvisy, working with a professional club does not mean moving towards professionalization of player status. The merger would not restore because of the "double-project" logic for the players, with the objective of "education through sport" and to have "something in parallel that allows to work during and / or after football. "

The evolution will therefore be mainly on a structural level for a club like Juvisy, which currently relies in large part on the support and contribution of volunteers who help to keep the club alive. A professionalisation at the structural level which responds, according to Pascal Gouzenes, to the current evolution of football and the objective would be to rely on the teams of the PFC to advance in this direction.

The new club whose launch is planned for the upcoming season (2017/2018) has no name yet, but according to Pascal Gouzenes, thought seems advanced to allow all partners to find themselves in the new club and manufacture an identity common to all merging stakeholders.