The National Union of Professional Football Players (UNFP) made their end of season award shortlists public earlier this week and a few surprise names featured.
Paris Saint-Germain’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic is present in the Player of the Year category, despite enduring by far his least productive season since arriving at the Parc des Princes. Olympique de Marseille’s Steve Mandanda somehow made it onto the Goalkeeper of the Year list in what has been a forgettable year for Les Phoceens’ defence.
Marseille’s Dimitri Payet has been overlooked for the Player of the Year award, despite racking up 14 assists on top of his six goals this season. However, the greatest injustice has to be the omission of AS Monaco’s Leonardo Jardim from the Coach of the Year award shortlist.
Rdv sur http://t.co/7j58y5maif si pour vous C. Galtier mérite le trophée de meilleur entraineur de L1 #TrophéesUNFP pic.twitter.com/4DZFEgEDp9
— UNFP (@UNFP) May 7, 2015
Olympique Lyonnais’ Hubert Fournier, EA Guingamp’s Jocelyn Gourvennec, PSG’s Laurent Blanc and AS Saint-Etienne’s Christophe Galtier all feature in the COTY category, yet only Fournier arguably deserves this gong more than Jardim.
It is difficult to stress just how much the Portuguese tactician merits being in contention for the prize. Having been appointed as Claudio Ranieri’s successor in early June of last year, Jardim’s first challenge was to deal with the drastically changing nature of Monaco’s ambitious “project” after the principality outfit embarked upon a restructuring process.
The 40-year-old arrived at the Stade Louis II and inherited a team boasting the likes of James Rodriguez, Radamel Falcao and Eric Abidal. But come the close of the transfer window, all three had been moved on, along with a handful of others, and little in the way of money for reinforcements was afforded to the new boss.
Supporters and season ticket holders were disgruntled by the club’s perceived lack of ambition and less than enamoured with the idea of a defensive-minded coach. In an unfamiliar country and no prior knowledge of the French language, Jardim set about trying to replicate last season’s second place finish as well as attempting to make it out of the Champions League group stages.
The former Sporting Clube de Portugal coach could hardly have made a more inauspicious start to his new job. Five games in and Monaco were 19th after three defeats, including a 4-1 thrashing away from home at the hands of Willy Sagnol’s Girondins de Bordeaux.
If anyone had said after their 2-1 loss away at then fellow strugglers Lyon in early September that Monaco would be third come the final three weeks of the season, they would have been greeted with howls of derision. Yet that is exactly where les Monegasques now find themselves after the most impressive of turnarounds under Jardim.
The Venezuelan-born Portuguese coach has led his team all the way back up the Ligue 1 table to the point where they are now five points ahead of fourth placed Marseille going into this Sunday’s big clash. ASM are still favourites to take the third and final Champions League qualification berth that they currently occupy, regardless of the result at Stade Velodrome.
Key to this impressive recovery has been Jardim’s pragmatism and an ability to get the best out of what he has had available to him. The canny tactician has turned the principality outfit into a difficult to beat side, with a rock-solid back line, while unearthing gems like compatriot Bernardo Silva along the way.
I did try and warn you about #ASM‘s Bernardo Silva – http://t.co/0MTW0rPGif for @FourFourTwo pic.twitter.com/5sbiAsOGcv — Andrew Gibney (@Gibney_A) February 26, 2015
At one point during the campaign, Monaco were enjoying a run of eight Ligue 1 games without conceding. It was a run that stretched from the end of November to early February before Gourvennec’s Guingamp ended it.
It has not always been pretty and it has regularly been tedious to watch in terms of attacking football, but Jardim’s tactics have been extremely effective and produced results. Considering the difficult situation he walked into last summer, this stabilising campaign will have exceeded many expectations.
To qualify for the Champions league again will be a big boost financially, while knocking Arsenal out in the Champions League round of 16 was an impressive feat and created plenty of fond memories.
Gourvennec has worked miracles with Guingamp and arguably deserves to keep his place on the Coach of the Year list, but Galtier and Blanc’s positions are debatable.
Galtier, although working with little in the way of funds once again, has kept Saint-Etienne at roughly the same level as last season. Nine points fewer and one position worse off does not really represent progress though, especially if you bear in mind les Verts’ poor Europa League campaign.
Admittedly, ASSE were unlucky to come up against PSG in both domestic cups, but they should have been able to prevent Monaco from overtaking them in the race for Europe and they have failed to do so.
Blanc on the other hand might be able to justify the prize if he leads les Parisiens to an unprecedented domestic treble, but that is far from guaranteed just yet and it will not have been decided by the time the ceremony rolls around on May 17th.
Monaco coach Jardim has reacted with good humour to COTY snub, saying he hopes he’ll be voted France’s best Portuguese builder instead!
— Jeremy Smith (@jeremysmith98) May 8, 2015
While he may well have ended up losing out to Lyon’s Fournier if he had featured on the list for the Coach of the Year prize, simply some recognition for Jardim would have been nice and shown a bit of objectivity in the voting.
Once again though, the UNFP awards have proved that it is not necessarily what you do, but who you know, that gets you recognition.
If that means Monaco can slowly and steadily continue to rebuild and Jardim can grow them into potential title-winning material, then it will be of great benefit to les Monegasques next season and beyond.
