With the arrival of Jean-Pierre Rivère at the top of the club, a new project begins. OGC Nice will change stadium, develop its infrastructure and its youth policy, inaugurate the training ground, welcome new investors, produce attractive football and secure the club’s best results since the golden years of the 1970s.

Just a few weeks after the victory in the Gambardella Youth Cup, Claude Puel was named head coach in the summer of 2012. It was a first strong decision from Chairman Jean-Pierre Rivère, who had taken control of the club less than a year earlier. Les Aiglons were quickly playing some beautiful football, but sat 17th after ten matches of the season. The results soon arrived, however, including a magnificent victory over Ibrahimovic’s PSG, 2-1 at the Stade du Ray and a 2-0 triumph over Lille. In the top six throughout the second half of the season, Les Aiglons pipped Lille and Saint Etienne at the post to claim fourth place and qualify for the Europa League - the club’s best Ligue 1 finish in 37 years.

From 'le Ray' to the Allianz Riviera

The next season saw OGC Nice enter a new era when it quit the Stade du Ray (with an unforgettable final match) for the state-of-the-art 35,000-capacity Allianz Riviera. On the pitch, Dario Cvitanich and co. missed out in the Europa League play-offs before enduring a nightmare season (17th). 2014-15 was to prove another tough campaign and an honourable 11th-placed finish before a spectacular return to the limelight just a year later.

"Hatem on t'aime", "SuperMario",...

Reinvigorated and embellished by the talent of Hatem Ben Arfa, the team was delighting French football, with notable victories over Saint-Etienne (1-4), Rennes (1-4) and Lyon (3-0). In doing so, the team climbed up to fourth place, securing the club’s first qualification for the group stages of the Europa League.

In the summer of 2016, Alex Zheng, Chien Lee and Paul Conway, a group of Sino-American investors, became the majority shareholders of the club, while the first brick of the new training ground was laid. Other changes were to come during a scorching summer. On the bench, first of all, when after four seasons at the helm of the club, Claude Puel left his role. He was replaced by Lucien Favre. Reputed for his love of the game and his passion for detail, the Swiss coach, who had managed Le Servette, FC Zurich, Hertha Berlin and Gladbach, was discovering L1 for the first time with Les Aiglons. This discovery was met with success. Before the end of the transfer window, the squad was significantly strengthened, with three major signings. One for each line of the team.

Brazilian defender, Dante, a Champions League winner in 2013 with Bayern Munich, and World Cup semi-finalist in 2014, arrived to add experience in defence. French champion with Montpellier in 2012, Younes Belhanda added dynamism in midfield.

And finally, there was the signing of a striker who had made an impact across the world: Mario Balotelli. The ‘Rock Star’ of Italian Football, was looking to relaunch his career, arriving from Liverpool after a period on loan at AC Milan. He made his mark immediately, scoring braces in his first two derbies, against Marseille (3-2, on 11 September 2016) and Monaco (4-0, on 21 September).

Hatem and co. could turn anyone over, but Mario and his teammates took Les Niçois even further. They led the pack halfway through the season, after dominating most of their 19 games (13 victories, 5 draws and 1 defeat). And then remained in the running for the title, going shoulder to shoulder with Paris and Monaco.

Their form dropped off in the winter, as the injury list grew, and Les Aiglons ended the season in third place, with a record points tally (78). They had even knocked PSG out of the running on an evening that is forever marked in the history books (3-1, on 30 April 2017). There were to be no sparks in the Europa League that season, however, and they dropped out disappointingly in the group stages.

Champions League anthem in Nice

On the podium of L1, for the first time in 41 years, Les Azuréens secured their return to the continental scene. They beat Ajax over two legs in the Champions League qualifiers, thanks to a goal from Vincent Marcel at the Amsterdam ArenA (1-1; 2-2), bringing the legendary hymn to the Allianz Riviera for the first time, in the play-offs against Napoli - an opponent that proved almost untouchable (2-0, 2-0).

After leaving Le Ray for the Allianz in 2013, the club went through another major change on 5 October 2017. After 46 years, the club staff said their goodbyes to the offices of Charles-Ehrmann, and entered a brand new training complex, just a hundred-odd metres down the road. On the pitch, Lucien Favre’s side made it out of the Europa League group stage, but fell in the Round of 32 against Lokomotiv Moscow (2-3, 1-0), and ended the season in 8th place in L1.

Le Gym new home

At the end of the campaign, the Swiss coach moved to Borussia Dortmund, prompting the board to call in Patrick Vieira as his successor. After managing Manchester City FC’s youth team and New York City FC’s first team, the 1998 FIFA World Cup winner joined the club on 11th June 2018, and under his watchful eye, the team finished the 2018–19 season in seventh place.

INEOS

2019 was another year marked by changes at the club’s helm. Having left on 11th January, Jean-Pierre Rivère and Julien Fournier officially returned as president and director of football respectively on 29th August, following INEOS’s takeover. Involved in many sports (including sailing, cycling, Formula 1 and marathon running), the company owned by Sir Jim Ratcliffe acquired a 100% stake in the club on 26th August. With Sir Jim’s brother, Bob Ratcliffe, replacing Chien Lee as the president of OGC Nice’s supervisory board, a new adventure was about to get underway.

This adventure would be marked by the global COVID-19 pandemic that started in early 2020. Following government decisions, the LFP brought France’s professional football season to an end on 30th April 2020 and, in order to determine the final Ligue 1 standings, applied the rule that the FFF had used for the country’s amateur divisions: taking into account the last game played and working out the number of points earned per match.

Sixth after their epic derby win over Monaco on Matchday 28 — the last matchday of the campaign — OGC Nice ended up climbing a place in the table thanks to the priority given to head-to-head meetings, meaning that their 2-0 win and 1-1 draw against Reims had moved them above the Champagne side.

Le Gym’s 2020–21 campaign was played behind closed doors, as it was for the majority of clubs around the world, and it proved to be a difficult season both in the Europa League, where the team made a rather premature group-stage exit, and in the league. On 4th December, the club parted ways with Patrick Vieira, and Adrian Ursea was given the reins of the first team. After a tricky period in the league, Les Aiglons would improve in the second half of the season to finish ninth, eight places behind eventual winners Lille.

 On 28th June 2021, LOSC’s title-winning coach Christophe Galtier left northern France to join OGC Nice, marking the beginning of a new chapter. Although it would only last for one season, the club would go through incredible highs and lows in that time; as well as being Paris Saint-Germain’s closest competitors for a good part of the 2021–22 campaign, Les Rouge et Noir enjoyed a great run in the Coupe de France. Thanks to wins over Cholet, PSG, OM and Versailles, they would make it all the way to the final of the competition for the first time in 25 years and would take their 12th man with them to the Stade de France.

 Unfortunately, Le Gym would lose 1-0 to Nantes in a match that will forever leave huge regrets. Despite this frustrating blow, though, and carried by an unstoppable Andy Delort, Les Aiglons finished the league season in fifth place thanks to a hat-trick from the Sète native in a 3-2 win away to Reims on the final day, thereby opening the doors to the UEFA Europa Conference League play-off round.

 

To replace Christophe Galtier, who had departed for PSG, OGC Nice called upon an old favourite: Lucien Favre. The Swiss coach – who had guided Les Aiglons to a third-place finish in Ligue 1 in 2016–17 as well as to the UEFA Champions League play-off round and to the UEFA Europa League round of 32 in 2017–18 – was now returning to a club where he had received unanimous support, in order to "give the fans something to cheer about again", in the words of president Rivère. Fresh off the back of his stint at Dortmund, Favre began the 2022–23 season with a 1-1 draw away to Toulouse to pick up where he had left off at Nice and to take charge of his 100th game as manager of Le Gym.

Favre’s second spell on the Côte d’Azur would last for six months. Despite a decent run in the Conference League, where they had finished top of their group and made it through to the last 16, Le Gym found the going tougher on the domestic stage, where they were languishing in 11th place in Ligue 1 after 17 games as well as being knocked out of the Coupe de France by Le Puy.

As a result, former captain Didier Digard, who had made 165 appearances for the club between 2010 and 2015, took over as first-team head coach on 9th January 2023.

Having returned to the club in 2019 and enjoyed roles with its various academy teams before earning the title of first-team assistant manager alongside both Ursea and Favre, Digard made a winning start to life as the main man in the dugout by thrashing Montpellier 6-1 just two days after being appointed. In the second half of the season, Le Gym would beat Sheriff Tiraspol in the last 16 of the UECL – 1-0 in Moldova and 3-1 on the Côte d’Azur – to reach their first European quarter-final since the 1960s. Unfortunately, despite picking up a very respectable 2-2 draw in the first leg, they were then eliminated in cruel fashion by FC Basel in the second leg. In front of 29,716 fans on home soil, Les Rouge et Noir enjoyed a one-goal lead for almost the entire match thanks to Gaëtan Laborde’s superb tenth-minute opener, but they were to be pegged back by Jean-Kévin Augustin’s equaliser in the 86th minute. Kasim Adams then put the Swiss side firmly in the driving seat with a goal in extra time, and despite a Billal Brahimi free kick hitting the bar, there would be no dramatic comeback from Le Gym, much to the disappointment of the Nice faithful. In the league, meanwhile, Digard’s men would earn a ninth-place finish.

On 30th June 2023, 34-year-old Francesco Farioli was named as Le Gym’s new first-team head coach.

The talented young Tuscan – a true student of the Italian game – stepped into the Rouge et Noir dugout following spells at Turkish clubs Fatih Karagümrük and Alanyaspor, and he would go on to build an extremely solid side that seemed to withstand everything in the first half of the season, earning sumptuous wins away to PSG (3-2), away to rivals Monaco (1-0) and at home to fellow neighbours OM (also 1-0). After spending a long time in Ligue 1’s top two spots, the team would drop off somewhat in the second half of the campaign but still manage to finish fifth, sending them directly into the group stage of the following season’s Europa League, an aim that had been set by the board at the start of the term.

In the summer of 2024, Farioli left OGC Nice to take over as manager of AFC Ajax, while Florent Ghisolfi, who had been the club’s sporting director since the autumn of 2022, joined AS Roma.

On 6th June, 50-year-old Florian Maurice became Ghisolfi’s successor, with 53-year-old Franck Haise appointed to the role of first-team head coach. Over a period of more than four seasons, Haise had taken RC Lens from Ligue 2 to the UEFA Champions League, notably guiding his side to a second-place finish in the French top flight at the end of the 2022–23 campaign, which earned him the Ligue 1 Manager of the Season award. With each year that has gone by, the man from Mont-Saint-Aignan has distinguished himself by imbuing his teams with a strong, attacking identity.