INTERVIEW
No more extended games and extra twists. The French Football Federation has decided to remove the extension at the end of regular time for matches in the Coupe de France in the event of a draw, except for the final. A provision, acted on Monday, which will apply from the 2020-2021 season. "It's a bad decision", reacts on Europe 1 Tuesday Guy Roux, Europe 1 football consultant and legendary coach of Auxerres. "They're getting more and more lazy," he adds, speaking of the players.
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The reflection of a "tendency to decrease efforts in everything"
This development, potentially favorable to surprises because it advances the indecisive penalty shootout, goes in the direction of a reduction in the pace in pro football, dear to the president of the FFF Noël Le Graët. For Guy Roux, it especially reflects "the tendency to reduce efforts in everything". "We take as an excuse that, in international competitions, our players must be as fresh as the others. For example, in Germany, they are only 18 in the first division so they have four fewer games in the year", illustrates the consultant.
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The 2020-2021 season promises to be particularly long for players with the highlight of the Euro, initially planned for 2020 and postponed to June-July 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Guy Roux therefore believes that the abolition of the extension was decided "so that the professional teams who play the European Cup also have less playing time in the crucial months of the year".
The best memory of Guy Roux's extension
Thus, shots on goal will directly determine the outcome of the matches, except for the final where the extension of twice fifteen minutes has been maintained. Guy Roux remembers a semi-final in Marseille in the early 2000s which was played in extra time. "We were one everywhere and there were penalties. The crowd had arrived a little on the ground. We were a little in physical danger. I told my players who were on the ground 'who misses his penalty does not take not the plane tonight. "And we scored the five penalties. And we won the Cup behind," said Guy Roux.
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Another hypothesis that could explain the suppression of extra time according to the consultant, "the calibration of playing times in television matches". "The Coupe de France, in the first rounds, is televised everywhere, up to ten and fifteen games over the weekend," he recalls. So when there are extensions, "it puts the whole program on the floor," he notes. A hypothesis put forward by Guy Roux but of which he is not certain.