The Moustoir tribute to Christian Gourcuff in 2014. -
JEAN-SEBASTIEN EVRARD / AFP
Christian finds Lorient on Sunday, where he was a player, coach-player and then finally coach.
With him, the Hakes climbed the ranks to reach the elite of French football and settle there for many years.
The current coach of the Canaries has also created a real style of play, according to the players interviewed.
He spent almost more than half of his life there as a player, coach-player and then coach.
Christian Gourcuff, 65, finds again, Sunday (3 p.m.), with FC Nantes, FC Lorient, that is to say the city, the club, the stadium which have made him one of the very best French technicians. .
“If FCL is there, it is thanks to Gourcuff, estimates Pierrick Le Bert, former player and educator at the Merlus.
He laid the foundation stones at the club and he instilled a real sports policy.
"What image really left the current coach of the Canaries, who left Morbihan in 2014?
He put FC Lorient on the map of French football
In 1982, Christian Gourcuff took the reins of Lorient as a player-coach at the age of 27.
The club is in the Honorary Division.
"It was Christian who took Lorient out of the small amateur environment where the club was immersed after, in particular, a bankruptcy (end of the 1970s)", says Laurent Aquilo, journalist at
Telegram
and great connoisseur of Merlus.
A small passage of four years (1982-1986) during which the Breton club climbed to D2, then a return in 1991 (until 2001) where Lorient experienced Ligue 1 then another comeback from 2003 to 2014 where the Merlus squat the elite.
“With a certain way of playing football, a very specific style… and a small budget, explains Loïc Bervas, who wrote a biography of the Nantes coach in 2013 entitled“ Gourcuff, another look at football ”.
The people here have kept that.
It is by playing a good game that we will have results.
"
With an unforgettable season for Gourcuff himself, that of 1997-1998 with Malm-Bouafia or Pedron, and the first climb in Ligue 1. “It will remain my best memory as a coach with a team in tune on both technical and human levels. “, He confided in 2013. Paradoxically, the Breton technician has won nothing with the Merlus - except a title of D3 champion in 1985 -.
“It's a paradoxical point, all the more so since it was just after his second start in 2002 that Pouliquen won the Coupe de France with FCL, notes Antoine, a 24-year-old fan of Les Merlus.
Afterwards, it is grandiose what he managed to do.
Especially for a small town like Lorient.
We stayed from 2006 to 2017 in L1 [from 2006 to 2014 with Gourcuff], it's not nothing.
»« This is his trophy!
“, Concludes ex-player Johan Audel.
He created a very strong gaming identity
A lot of former players only talk about that.
“A real idea of a game”, for Guillaume Moullec.
“A tactic that ran like clockwork”, according to Johan Audel.
"A lover of the beautiful game, a football purist, but also a tactical rigor to the millimeter," observes Yann Jouffre.
“I think people are sometimes nostalgic here for that,” continues Loïc Bervas.
Actions with Vahirua, Koné, Aliadière… ”And there were many other fine players (Abriel, Gameiro, Gignac etc.).
We thus keep the image of a coach stuck on his playing convictions (in 4-4-2 necessarily) and to whom we have sometimes criticized for igniting, after a defeat or a victory, his opponents because their style of game did not fit his concept of the round ball.
"He had a real side as a lesson-giver, but he seems to have calmed down", loose a great connoisseur of Breton football.
"Not only, Lorient has maintained itself during all these years [2003-2014], but he did it by playing well with the ball", analyzes Audel, very marked by his only season with Gourcuff.
"He's a coach apart for me," Jouffre incenses.
When I talk to colleagues who have had it and who have moved on to big clubs, they all tell me that when it comes to football sensitivity and the importance of the game, they have never seen it elsewhere.
Moullec even mentions "a game à la Lorientaise" introduced by Gourcuff.
“He put his mark, his paw on the club.
"
He left over a conflict in May 2014
Making a subject on Gourcuff and Lorient also means encountering numerous refusals of testimonials.
Solicited, the Lorient club did not, for example, put any trainer (Genton, Le Bris, Le Lan etc.) at our disposal to mention the FCN coach.
Other people who knew him well politely refused to speak.
"It is a divisive character", justifies the former president of Merlus Alain Le Roch.
Despite his natural kindness, some also blame him for a certain recurring awkwardness in human relations.
At the end of the 2013-2014 season, he left FC Lorient after a season during which "he no longer speaks to his president", says a close friend of the club.
The quarrel started with Mario Lemina's sudden departure from Marseille on the last day of the summer transfer window.
A sale validated by President Loïc Féry, but not by Coach Gourcuff.
"Unless you are among the giants, the rule of economic health applies in all clubs that want to continue, explained the president of Lorient in 2019 on the club website about this episode.
For the "little ones" like FC Lorient, it is even vital.
A coach does not discover these balance needs at the end of the transfer window, contrary to what we may have read or heard.
"" An unfortunate discord, "according to Antoine, a supporter, who precipitated the departure of Gourcuff on May 17, 2014, during a 1-4 setback against Lille.
Just after the match, in front of stunned journalists, Féry thanks his coach for all the work done during all these years, who answers him out of the blue: “Me, I don't thank you!
".
"Leaving Lorient was certainly the most difficult professional decision," the Breton technician will one day admit.
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