INTERVIEW
The figures reflect a missed season, by AS Monaco standards: 40 points (in 28 days), as many goals conceded as scored and a passable ninth place at the end of a championship stopped due to the coronavirus crisis . So, when the 2020-2021 Ligue 1 financial year begins, Monegasque goalkeeper Benjamin Lecomte obviously hopes to perform better in the months to come. "Monaco must be at the top of the table," he said at the microphone of Europe 1 of Lionel Rosso.
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The 2017 French champion club had a trying season, marked by the departure of its emblematic coach, Leonardo Jardim, and unusual collective instability on the Rock. "We did not succeed in classifying Monaco at the top of Ligue 1", rewinds the former Montpellier porter. "We weren't where we could have been."
Last year, "good as well as less good"
Individually, Benjamin Lecomte is lucid over complicated months in the Principality, while he shone by his consistency in the Hérault: "There was good as well as less good and the high level forgives less. performances are very good every weekend and that I can bring what I perhaps did a little less last season. "
But beyond Benjamin Lecomte's intentions, it was the collective face of Monaco that first changed. There is a new sports director, the Englishman Paul Mitchell, with a seasoned profile of talent scout. There is above all a new coach, the Croatian Niko Kovac, who has arrived to replace Gerard Moreno. "Different" methods, compares the 29-year-old goalkeeper: with Kovac, "there is a lot of pressing, the desire to play, to go back to the rear and to be very aggressive on the ball carrier. The game ideas are clear. "
Very young workforce
And to develop his game plan, the former Bayern Munich coach is overhauling the squad, with the sidelining of experienced players compared to a very young group. Defender Jemerson and striker Keïta Baldé, holders in the past, are no longer part of the technician's plans for the current season.
Faithful to its reputation as a club capable of hatching nuggets, as were Kylian Mbappé or Anthony Martial, Monaco at the same time recruited several hopes, like the Reims defender Axel Disasi. "There are a lot of young people this year. It can be a strength, because this youth, with a few executives, can do good things", wants to believe Benjamin Lecomte, for whom the ASM must display "a slightly higher level that it was last season ".