The coach of the France team confided on Saturday at the microphone of Europe 1, on football personalities for whom he had deep respect, while refusing the term "icons".

The architect of the 1998 World Cup victory, Aimé Jacquet, and the former director of the Nantes training center, Raynald Denoueix, occupy a good place.

Who do you admire when you are one of only three people on Earth to be the world football champion as both player and coach?

Who do you look at with the eyes of Chimene when you have been leading the national team of your country for nearly ten years, with the supreme coronation on an already well-stocked CV?

This is the question that Michel Denisot asked Didier Deschamps on Saturday in the program

Icons

, on Europe 1. The coach of the Blues has also refused to use this term, preferring that of "references".

Denoueix school

In the career of Didier Deschamps, there is, before a man, a "school": that of FC Nantes, that the Bayonnais joined in adolescence to make his ranges.

In Loire-Atlantique, the midfielder discovered a unique game project, carried by emblematic figures.

"I first had Raynald Denoueix, the director of the training center, who was very important since I was mainly in contact with him, with the environment of the training center. Coco Suaudeau (Jean-Claude Suaudeau, Editor's note) took care of the pros, so it's more Raynald Denoueix and the various teachers "of FC Nantes who had this influence on the Basque.

Face-to-face with Tapie

Trained, installed, at ease in his game, Didier Deschamps continued his career at the Olympique de Marseille, directed by Bernard Tapie in the early 1990s. "There are always things that have remained with me from Bernard Tapie, in good and sometimes bad. But he told me certain things which are important and which have served me in my career as well. We had a lot of exchanges ", assures today" DD ".

>> Find all of Michel Denisot's interviews every Saturday at 8.45am on Europe 1 as well as in podcast and replay here

The latter could also have been exchanged with Jocelyn Angloma, who was playing at Paris Saint-Germain at the time.

"I stood up to him (Bernard Tapie). I made sure not to flex," Didier Deschamps remembers today.

"It could have gone badly, but despite everything, he didn't hold it against me. And the season that followed, I had the opportunity and he gave me my chance."

Closeness to Agnelli at Juve

Winner of the Champions League with Olympique de Marseille in 1993, the midfielder recurs with Juventus Turin in 1996. In Piedmont, it is with another figure that he binds, "Avvocato Agnelli" (Gianni by his first name, owner of Juventus editor's note).

"It was still his club. There was a three-headed decision-making power with Antonio Giraudo, Roberto Bettega, the former player, and Luciano Moggi. They were the ones who ran the club. But the Avvocato… He Sometimes came to training and he spoke French. I just told him, at the start, 'I'm sorry, but I'm not Michel Platini, I will never be able to do like him.' He understood it well and he He also had a lot of humor, although sometimes he could do heavy media outlets at times. "

Jacquet, "a great reference"

Finally, there is Aimé Jacquet, coach of the Blues world champions in 1998 with Didier Deschamps as conductor in the heart of the game. If the Basque again refuses to speak of an icon, the man of Forez is for him " a great reference, at least, to put it mildly ".

This is how he feels "an eternal gratitude for what he has made of us and the relationship that we have been able to have and that I still have, moreover. I consider this relationship to be privileged, again. today, because I can talk to him. "

And share the experience, extremely rare, of having led a selection on the roof of the world.