At the end of Montpellier’s heavy defeat against OM (5-0), on October 20, Michel Der Zakarian was unceremoniously thanked by the boss of the MHSC, Laurent Nicollin. Before being fired, the French technician, not very talkative in the media, spoke at length in the columns of SoFoot. The opportunity for “MDZ” to retrace his playing career, and to tell an anecdote about Aimé Jacquet and Louis Nicollin which marked him.
In 1988, Michel Der Zakarian, then aged 25, left FC Nantes to join Montpellier. And after a 3-1 defeat at Lyon in 1990, the former defender recounted the brutality with which “Loulou” Nicollin dismissed the Montpellier coach at the time, Aimé Jacquet, without a pinch of salt and in front of the locker room.
Aimé Jacquet was fired “like a mess”
“I was at the end of my contract in Nantes. Last year, I didn’t participate much (21 league matches), so I also wanted to leave, and there weren’t many clubs that came forward. Loulou was a big, big character, with an aura, an ease. As a player, I knew him to be excessive, in every sense, in affection, but also in anger. Volcanic. He moved us a lot. He was virulent, sometimes hurtful “, Der Zakarian first recalled.
And to continue: “ I remember a defeat in Lyon, his city, 3-1, in February 90. Aimé Jacquet was the coach, there had been a big recruitment effort, with Cantona and Paille, and we were last. The president enters the locker room, he says to Aimé: ‘So, what do we do? – I don’t know, president, I’m lost. – You’re fired.’ Like that, in front of everyone. We were all stunned. There was a long silence… Aimé was a really good coach, he made us work well. He had been a three-time French champion with Bordeaux and he was getting kicked out like a mess…”
