There are still five games to go in the Ligue 1 campaign, but a fair amount has been sorted out already: PSG are nine points clear at the top of the table; five teams are in the race for the four remaining European places*; Troyes and Brest look gone, leaving four teams battling to avoid the final relegation spot. Transfer rumours bubble under, players are starting to lay the groundwork for moves in the summer – and managerial moves are also afoot.
The current season has already seen four managerial changes: the first was back in September, when Evian binned Pablo Correa for Pascal Dupraz, having taken only 1 point from their first four games; in the winter break, Ajaccio brought in Albert Emon to replace Alex Dupont, himself only in place since the start of the season. In January, Nancy appointed Patrick Gabriel to replace Jean Fernandez (more on him later); and most recently Brest sacked Landry Chauvin (again, in place only since last summer) and put in Corentin Martins as they fight to stay up.
Now, Ligue 1 is pre-planning some managerial moves for the summer: Montpellier’s Rene Girard is leaving, to be replaced by Jean Fernandez; and Rennes’ Frederic Antonetti is off, bemoaning his team’s lack of character, replacement as yet unconfirmed. This level of passing the parcel is not unusual, of course – the longest-serving Ligue 1 boss is Christian Gourcuff, in place at Lorient since 2003; apart from him, nobody has been in place more than five years, Rudi Garcia and Alain Casanova taking charge in 2008, and there will undoubtedly be other shifts in the summer.
The Montpellier situation has been rumbling for a while, and President Louis Nicollin took the possibly unusual step of unveiling next season’s manager while the current incumbent is still yelling at people from the sideline. Jupp Heynckes handing over to Pep Guardiola this is not; but neither is it quite as mad as some of the early rumours – Diego Maradona and Raymond Domenech were briefly touted for the role, along with the more sensible options of Laurent Blanc, Antoine Koumbouare and Eric Gerets. But it is Jean Fernandez who has the nod, and his record perhaps doesn’t make for entirely comfortable reading for fans of La Paillade.
Fernandez is a local man – as a child, his parents moved from Algeria to near Beziers in Herault, and he played for the local side before moving to Marseille in 1975, later playing with Rene Girard at Bordeaux in the early 1980s. His managerial career similarly started in the South, at Cannes, Nice and then Marseille, before heading off to Saudi Arabia in 1993, punctuated by a short and unhappy (in more ways than one – he returned to France to be near his dying mother) stay at Lille in 1994/95. On returning to France again in 1999, he managed a series of clubs: Sochaux, Metz, Marseille, Auxerre, and finally Nancy.
In this period, he established himself as a promotion expert, taking first Sochaux then Metz from Division 2 to Division 1, and also as an identifier and developer of talent, Emmanuel Adebayor, Mamadou Niang, and Franck Ribery all benefiting from his coaching – Ribery has referred to him as his « père spirituel ». After those two successful three-year stints, he returned to Marseille for the 2005/06 season, taking Ribery and Niang with him; under his tutelage, OM reached the Coupe de France final (losing to PSG) and finished fifth. However, he fell out with sporting director Jose Anigo, amongst other things, and moved to Auxerre for five seasons; they finished 8th, 15th, 8th, 3rd (for which he was awarded UNFP best manager), and 9th. They were then relegated in 2011/12 after his departure. One thing characterising performances at OM and Auxerre is a strong second half of the season after a slightly shaky start.
He then moved to Nancy, presumably with a view to getting the mid-table amblers up to the heady heights of contention for Europe as he had done with Auxerre. In 2011/12 they finished 11th, again after a storming recovery in the second half of the season – Nancy were down in the red zone at the Christmas break, but at least it was close down there, with only 6 points separating 9th and 19th. When they ended up there again, at the 2012 Christmas break, they were dead last on 11 points, with only one win all season, and eight points off safety. Nancy beat DH side Dreux 5-1 in the cup in January, and Fernandez left, apparently of his own accord.
So, a slightly odd record – Louis Nicollin has described his motives for choosing Fernandez – “he’s a developer [formateur], a good coach, who has proved himself at lots of clubs, arguably at every club he has coached - yes, we can talk about Nancy, we asked about that – he left because he was fed up, maybe they were fed up … but he didn’t ask for money. I know a lot of people would have asked for a lot of money to leave – that’s not his style, he’s a good bloke”.
The rumours about Diego Maradona coming to take over at Mosson (however much based on a LouLou joke that Diego’s ‘people’ apparently took seriously) did make you wonder whether having two off-the-wall characters at the same football club would be a good idea. With Rene Girard, the writing had been on the wall for some time: narked at the sale of captain and CB Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa in January – particularly when covering options Benjamin Stambouli and Abdelhamid El-Kaoutari were injured and at the CAN respectively, and journeyman fullback/walking booking Cyril Jeunechamp had copped a year-long ban for hitting a journalist – and the ongoing transfer farrago surrounding Younes Belhanda and John Utaka, it looked like the UNFP Manager of the 2011/12 season was losing his patience with his outspoken owner. He also seemed to be losing control of the dressing room – benching first goalkeeper Geoffrey Jourdren and the usually smiley holding midfielder Marco Estrada after ‘words’ were apparently ‘had’ - and was struggling to cobble together a workable first eleven for Montpellier’s debut Champions League campaign (witness – Mathieu Deplagne making his non-Cup senior debut in the match at the Emirates, where Yanga-Mbiwa was deployed in midfield, which a certain Arsenal striker may have recognised as a sign of desperation).
Girard had form as an FFF youth coach, and had taken over a club that had just won the Gambardella. He integrated some of those players, Belhanda, Stambouli, El-Kaoutari and eccentric live-wire Remy Cabella, in the senior squad, but several were farmed out, or otherwise too risky to risk in C1. The sale of Giroud did not just deprive MHSC of their key goalscorer, but also brought in four new players (Congre, Mounier, Charbonnier, Herrera) to be integrated, some of whom struggled badly in the early stages of the season. The key thing for Montpellier, in the next few seasons, will be consolidation; to avoid the kind of poor start they made to Ligue 1 this term, to set up to be able to cope with fighting on several fronts if they do make European competition again.
Arguably what Montpellier need is a safe pair of hands, and the Fernandez habit of second-half-of-season recoveries may not be the best fit for that. While the 2011/12 campaign will live long in the memory of MHSC fans, it was a perfect storm – PSG having not yet fully transformed their team to millionaire levels and having their own managerial changes to deal with; Marseille in a pronounced slump; Lille not having quite the luck of their opponents. Boring – however boring that might be – could be the best way to recover from the hallucinatory experience of winning Ligue 1 for the first time, and then nearly collapsing immediately afterwards.
The main thing will be to balance that ‘boring’ with the spark that the MHSC squad undoubtedly possesses – Belhanda may have been cleared for take-off in the summer, as is Bedimo, and Utaka can leave on a free, but the key players to retain will be the likes of Cabella and Stambouli, Jonas Martin finding his way into the squad, polyvalent goalscorer Souleymane Camara, Karim Ait-Fana and Jamel Saihi when back from injury, and some of the loan players when they return home: cup stalwart Jonathan Tinhan (Arles-Avignon), Bengali Fode Koita (Le Havre). Also, with the only four senior defenders available forming the backline, some promotion is needed from the youth/reserve teams -Teddy Mezague has appeared on the bench several times, but is yet to make his senior debut – to support (hopefully) purchases in the summer to provide cover for the stalwart but not-getting-any-younger Vitorino Hilton. Nicollin needs to support his new manager with some investment to shore up that formation; on past evidence, this will mean that the money brought in for Belhanda and possibly Bedimo will be the transfer pot, so it will be important to get those deals sewn up early enough to be able to buy sensibly.
Girard has five games left in charge; Montpellier are 8th on 48 points, and given how the Coupe de France has panned out, they won’t be in Europe next season, but a top half finish looks safe, and hopefully they can finish with some style. Next up is a trip to Ajaccio, not out of the relegation battle, then Brest (H), Bastia (A), Lille (H) and Toulouse (A). Fernandez will inherit a good squad, but not a large one – getting him in place before the summer, when there will be other priorities, might just be a boringly sensible move from Montpellier.
* European note – the top three get Champions League (3rd place via the 3rd qualifying round); Europa league places are there for the Coupe de France winners, 4th-placed team (via play-offs), and Coupe de la Ligue winners, so Saint-Etienne are in already by virtue of that, but will be looking for a higher entry level than the 3rd Qualifying Round – if they finish in the top four, the final Europa League place goes to the 5th-placed team in the Ligue. Lorient (7th) are the highest-placed team still in the CdF – the others are Bordeaux (9th), Evian (16th) and Troyes (20th) – but are four points off Nice in 6th, so look unlikely to be challenging for a place based on Ligue position.