Paris
Argentina international forward Marcos Kremer has signed a three-year deal with Stade Francais until 2023, the Top 14 club announced Tuesday.
The 22-year-old lock/backrower, capped 28 times by Los Pumas, will link up once more with his compatriot and former coach at Super Rugby outfit the Jaguares, Gonzalo Quesada.
“They know each other very well,” said Stade director general Thomas Lombard, calling Kremer a “player with massive potential used to playing at a high international level”.
Also unveiled as a Stade player was Georgian prop Vasil Kakovin, who signed a one-year contract from cross-Paris rivals Racing 92.
Stade president Hans-Peter Wild, the Swiss billionaire businessman who made his fortune from soft drinks, added that the club’s players had accepted a 20% cut in salary as the sport struggles with the coronavirus pandemic.
“It was important that the players understand the difficulty of the situation,” said Lombard. Over recent weeks, players from Stade’s Top 14 rivals Castres, Toulouse, Toulon, Pau, Brive, Clermont, Montpellier and Bordeaux-Begles have all signed similar wage-cutting agreements.
Stade Francais, based in western Paris, are the Top 14’s wealthiest side, with an expenditure of 40 million Euros ($43m) last season.
The Parisian outfit, who won the last of their 14 league titles in 2015, were bottom of the Top 14 table when the season was declared over in April because of the COVID-19 outbreak.—AP
