Almost a year ago, Fabio Grosso arrived in Lyon to replace Laurent Blanc as coach. But the Italian coach did not stay in place for very long. He left three months later, due to insufficient results.
Grosso’s tenure has been marked by his conflict with his own players. After seeing locker room secrets leaked to the media, he cancelled a training session to seek “the mole”. However, he did not find the culprit and this episode considerably impacted his relationship with the locker room.
Tolisso did not agree with Grosso
Corentin Tolisso, one of OL’s executives, spoke about the famous scene during a report for L’Equipe. “Yes, we can talk about that. It was the day of the official photo. That day, it was very cold. A radio station had released the day before many of the things that Grosso was saying. Only, I did not agree that training should be cancelled. I told him that we were in an extreme situation, last in the championship and that the last thing to do was to cancel training.”he said.
“It wasn’t the right fight to fight. There were other fights that were more important. From that day on, there was a real disconnect between him and the players,” added the French international. An impression confirmed by his partner Maxence Caqueret: “It put a chill in the locker room. And it was the beginning of the end. Because he lost his entire locker room.”
Tolisso stressed that there were no reservations about the Italian coach when he arrived at the club.
“We really believed in it from the start,” he assured.
Grosso was replaced by Sage on the Lyon bench and the club returned to acceptable performance, even reaching the European places. But the current season has started badly. The defeat against OM on Sunday evening was the 3e in 5 championship days.
