Nantes (AFP)
The roads of the coaches Christian Gourcuff and Claude Puel have for a time, distant from France and even from Europe, but the two sea lions cross again Sunday (17h00), for a Nantes - Saint-Etienne important for the top of the table in the L1.
Before the 13th day, the Canaries are fourth, the Greens eighth, but a victory will allow the second to overtake the first and approach the podium, in a moving classification that has not yet found its hierarchy, except for the Paris leader.
Appointed at the beginning of October at the head of a drifting ship, Puel, still undefeated at his new post, found the favorable winds to bring the St Etienne into warmer seas. If the dynamics leans on his side, he must be wary of the most marine French technicians, also the oldest (64 years) of the Championship.
Gourcuff, the Breton, settled in August in Nantes, with its principles, convictions, values, forged by passages in Rennes and Lorient, but also in Algeria and Qatar.
The start was promising, crowned by a second place of L1, then there was a big blow of slack: three defeats to Metz (1-0), against Monaco (1-0) and Bordeaux (2- 0), interspersed with a demonstration in the Coupe de la Ligue (8-0) against Paris FC.
- "less pleasant" for Nantes -
"Do not dramatize, it's football, it's less pleasant, but not dramatic," said the coach, in a very calm tone on Friday.
Puel also suffered storms, especially as a coach. Player then coach in Monaco, he saw that the edges of the Mediterranean could sometimes be agitated, before exercising in Lille, Lyon and Nice, then in England.
Back in France after taking a step back, following his first dismissal as coach, in February 2019, Puel immediately gave a course to lost Greens: three prestigious victories against Lyon, Bordeaux and Monaco (1-0) , and a nice rise to the rank of L1.
If the two technicians share similarities through their long courses, on the field Nantes - Saint-Etienne will be an opposition of styles, because Gourcuff is a fan of the 4-4-2 in the service of the beautiful game, if possible, while Puel has long had the image of a hard-working coach, advocating a defensive, physical game.
- "many things to correct" for the Greens -
But in the Forez, Puel seems to have changed, at 58 years. We hear him talk with balloon interest, game plans. He makes the team live well and it is difficult to predict his team compositions, because he wants to involve the greatest number of players, even if at the Beaujoire, he will have to do without two recently injured executives, Yann M'Vila and William Saliba.
He is also a hard worker who pays attention to details. The two-headed Greens have used a lot of coaches but want to give him time. A bit like the Kita family, in Nantes, who planned to extend Gourcuff's lease by giving him full powers.
"We must always work on fundamentals," says Gourcuff, "because a collective that lives, it's never stable.To maintain the automatisms, while looking for finer aspects, richer.Arriving to do rigorously things the simplest, especially in periods of failure ".
"We still have a lot of work and a lot of things to fix," said Puel after the win against Monaco. "Players do not communicate well, encouraging their partner or giving technical information helps make the game smoother." For both coaches, work sets the course, always.
© 2019 AFP