- Very rare in the media, Olivier Sadran spoke this Monday evening at the Toulouse Stadium.
- The president of the TFC painted a very bleak picture of the situation in the 20th of Ligue 1, without proposing concrete solutions.
The event had not occurred since June 25, 2018. Olivier Sadran held a press conference on Monday at the Stadium to talk about the TFC he has chaired since 2001. In mid-season, the Toulouse team is stuck at the last place in Ligue 1, eliminated from the Coupe de France by a fourth division club (Saint-Pryvé-Saint-Hilaire).
She is angry with her most fervent supporters and, for the first time in her history, she has already changed coach twice in the season: after ten defeats in a row, Denis Zanko succeeded Sunday Antoine Kombouaré, who had himself replaced Alain Casanova in mid-October.
An exercise in contrition
Suffice to say that for a supporter of the Violets, Sadran's intervention was akin to the passage of Halley's comet for an astronomy enthusiast. So what can we learn from this hour-long discussion in front of twenty journalists? Already, the whole lexical field of misfortune has passed there, during an exercise of contrition of which the main shareholder of TFC is not used to it.
Selected extracts:
- “I am really ashamed of what we are producing, I have full responsibility for it and if we are there, it is because I made mistakes. "
- "The situation is catastrophic, it is probably the worst since the takeover in 2001."
- “The team in place and of which I am a part is in total failure and a certain number of decisions must be taken. "
Precisely on this subject, Sadran remained very elusive. Yes, we need to strengthen the workforce, but "there can be zero as three arrivals to the winter transfer window". The management team, and in particular the much criticized recruitment cell, has failed to bring the club higher than a 13th place in Ligue 1 since 2015 (once 18th, twice 17th, once 16th)? It is true but "we will try to have a more serene analysis" before making changes, he said.
📊 The flop 3 of the coaches of @ToulouseFC in terms of% of defeat in @ Ligue1Conforama:
Antoine Kombouaré: 90%
Henri Cammarata: 59%
Jean-Luc Ruty: 56% pic.twitter.com/hCmSh88osr
Not necessarily enough to encourage the supporters to "bring an extra soul" from Saturday against Brest, in a Stadium which should sound very hollow.
The CEO of Newrest also defended a recurring accusation against him: having placed relatives at key positions in the club. "I am not friends with Jean-François Soucasse [deputy president] and Dominique Arribagé [in charge of recruitment]", he pleaded.
"You must not go down"
Sadran has been clearer on the objective to be reached by the end of May. "Gather five or six points on our competitors in 19 days". “It's a little harder to go down with the dams, so harder to go up. We must not go down. "
💬 Olivier #Sadran
"We must now apply simpler methods of work, confidence and stability to fight against teams that are within our reach. The fateful bar of 42 points no longer exists today in my opinion." # ConfTFC
And the struggle for maintenance, an ordinary combat of the TFC since the mid-2010s, does not go through pigeon wings or passing legs. "The public, there are fewer today, we wanted to seduce it four or five years ago by turning to more play and we completely fell apart. "
And then, in any case, according to Sadran, "the Toulouse public is very attached to physical effort, perhaps more than pure play. The Zanko players will therefore have to run, fight and of course stop taking more than two goals per game (39 conceded during the first 19 days).
Not excited by contemporary football
And then, what will Olivier Sadran do with his club? We can feel that football version 2020 and its environment please him less than that of the Pitchouns period, when under the aegis of Erick Mombaerts, the TFC had risen from the National in L1, between 2001 and 2003. "Football has really changed, "he slips. “Today, the players first have an individual project, they all see each other at Barça or Real. "
And he, he sees himself letting go of the reins, while he regrets that the partnership studied with Manchester City in the summer of 2018 did not ultimately succeed. A priori, yes, whether it is an outright sale or the entry of a new shareholder: "I can be 100% open like someone who comes to help and who fulfills a role operational that I do not fulfill. "
In the meantime, before the DNCG in the spring, "I will assume the economic consequences so that the club can continue to be in professional football". In Ligue 1 or Ligue 2, the most likely outcome to date.
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