Guillaume Gille has not changed his way of being since he took the reins of the France team a year ago.
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Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / POOL / AFP
The Blues had to fight hard against Hungary on Wednesday to snatch their place in the semifinals of the Egyptian World Cup.
Opposed to Sweden this Friday, Guillaume Gille's men are only one step away from a final which seemed unexpected at the start of the competition.
To achieve this, the new style of the staff of the France team, all in control and in measure, seems to bear fruit with the group.
"Please don't piss us off the coach!
".
From the small videoconference room of the hotel of the France team in Giza, on the eve of the semi-final against Sweden, the press secretary of the Blues is fed up.
While one of our colleagues has just asked Guillaume Gille a question about the kind of feeling of tranquility that has accompanied him in all circumstances since the start of the World Cup, the new boss gets annoyed.
“You know, I'm not wearing a costume on this mission.
If you see me like that, you put the qualifiers you want ..., he sweeps.
It's me, it's not another person.
When I get angry or when I get emotional, you will also notice that.
You don't necessarily have to put a label on me.
Let’s see this sudden little focus as the exception that proves the rule.
Because since the start of the competition, at the former assistant to Didier Dinart, everything is luxury, calm and pleasure.
In England, there is an expression to qualify this phlegm: "Cool as a cucumber".
"Quiet as a cucumber", therefore, which is used to designate someone particularly serene when the situation does not necessarily lend itself to it.
"It's their way of operating [to Guillaume Gille and his assistant Eric Mathé], these are two fairly calm, calm, serene temperaments," notes Michaël Guigou at a press conference.
It's not worse because when you start a match like the one against Hungary, you have to know how to take things with a little perspective and then make the right decisions.
It's true that in addition we have had a lot of games at loggerheads from the start and they still manage to keep this state of mind.
If this is their trademark and it brings us this serenity and calm in important moments, so much the better.
"
The calm despite the storm
The start of the cataclysmic quarter-final of the Blues to which Guigou certainly alludes is the best example.
While the hut was taking water everywhere (7-1 for Hungary after the 11th minute) and we were already starting to check the schedules of the next Gizeh-Paris CDG, Guillaume Gille knew how to make the right choices at the right times.
Like leaving very early in the match its leader Kentin Mahé, in distress against the Hungarians.
"When we find ourselves dumped in terms of the score, that we miss most of our first actions in attack, that defensively we struggle to find rhythm and aggressiveness and that we find ourselves very quickly under pressure, my goal it is to seek a semblance of stability and renewed confidence, he explains.
The idea at this point is to find the right balance between the moment when it is necessary to act, the moment when it is necessary to give serenity, confidence, so that the group is able to recover.
"
And if we listen to Valentin Porte on the microphone of beIN Sport, it does not work too badly.
“Even at 9-3 for them, when we just took a hit to the head, I didn't feel us panicking.
It's already a good thing if we have that for us.
"" It is important, at the level of the staff, in what we transmit to the players as energy, as an attitude, to be able to bring the right tone, the right message.
Afterwards, good or bad, it's my way of doing things, that's all ”, self-analysis Guillaume Gille.
"It gives off something very serene"
For Mario Cavalli, the former coach of Chambéry who knows the man well for having rubbed shoulders with him since his arrival at the club, in sports studies in 1994, this is not surprising.
“It's his character.
He is calm, calm, thoughtful but also unifying.
In all the groups he's been in, he's always been that way, he says.
Whether first as a player and then as captain, then as an assistant and now as a coach.
It is not for nothing that we kept him in the France team at the end of his career, even if he did not play a lot.
He was there because he brings something more to the group in its way of being, of behaving ”.
With nine small matches on the coach's CV, Guillaume Gille is still in the learning phase.
But the profession returns quickly.
“I find that his posture has changed since the start of the competition, notes Cavalli.
At first, when things wavered a little on the pitch, we could see in his facial expressions or his gestures that it was not easy to live with.
And there I find that he gives off something very serene, like someone sure of himself.
The game plan is also becoming more and more coherent.
And in his choices, in his speech during downtime, we see that there is a real trust that has been established between him, his staff and the group.
"
At the time of facing Sweden for a place in the final of an international competition which has passed under the noses of the Blues for three years, the coach is serene.
He doesn't really believe in ghosts from the past that come back to haunt you.
“These lost semi-finals [against Denmark at Euro 2018 and against Germany at the 2019 World Cup] is the story of part of this team, it's true, but it's behind us, he said.
And winning Friday will not bring us back the places we did not get in the last competitions.
The goal is simply to continue to grow and to see what this group has learned from past experiences.
Responsible as Didier Dinart, by his own confession, the last tricolor fiasco at the Euro, has already partially drawn his own.
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