Six-time French champions Bordeaux, sanctioned in the summer for financial irregularities, will play in the sixth tier of French football this season, the Nouvelle-Aquitaine league confirmed on Thursday.

Bordeaux were sanctioned for failing to provide the roughly 10 million euros ($11.6m) needed for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 financial years and to meet debt payments.

Once one of France’s leading football clubs and the team where the country’s new head coach, Zinedine Zidane, made his name, Bordeaux was sold last month for a symbolic one euro to US-based investment group Park Bench, which agreed to take on the remaining debt.

Two days after appearing before the Nouvelle-Aquitaine league oversight commission, which approved its recovery budget and issued “a positive opinion on their possible participation in Regional 1”, the club was unanimously approved to play in the top regional tier.

“Rebuilding can now begin,” said Dominique Delport, the new president chosen by Park Bench, speaking to the AFP news agency.

The new owners are due in commercial court on October 20 to ratify the new continuation plan, which now runs over 12 years, with the debt halved from 26 million to 13 million euros.

The team is largely amateur, though the club can field five players on professional contracts, one of whom will be former Ligue 1 striker Baptiste Guillaume.

The club has produced many big names of French football, including academy products Bixente Lizarazu and Christophe Dugarry, who both played alongside Zidane in the 1998 World Cup-winning team.

More than a decade earlier, Alain Giresse and Jean Tigana were part of a celebrated France midfield that won the 1984 European Championship.

However, they were relegated to Ligue 2 in 2022 and then placed under judicial restructuring in 2024, which caused them to relinquish their professional status and their highly rated academy.