An essential figure of the Team in the early 2000s, especially because of its proximity to the French Arsenal players, Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira in mind, Pierre Ménès had however been dismissed from the follow -up of the French team as the 1998 World Cup approaches. Consequence of his reserves on the treatment inflicted on Aimé Jacquet.
The former polemicist of the Canal Football Club explained it in a video this winter. “” A month and a half before the start of the World Cup, there is a big meeting at the team. The moment we have the right to ask questions. I raise my hand and I say, because we felt that the team already had a very anti-loved Jacquet position: 'we have the best goalkeeper in the world, the best defense in the world, the best player in the world. We have a cardboard group, so there is still a probability that it all goes so bad. Couldn't we go a little more soft on the anti-jacquet campaign? ' “, had he said.
“And there I was told 'firm there, you understand nothing, Jacquet is a draw, he takes us into the wall'. This is why I was dismissed from the coverage of the French team on this competition ”, had he continued, adding:
“I know that loved it has always done things and has always been charming with me. He knew I was against this anti-jacquet campaign. »»
Pierre Ménès with OM in Hendaye
On July 12, 1998, the day of the grand final between France and Brazil, Pierre MĂ©nès was therefore not at the Stade de France as most of his colleagues, but in … Hendaye, where Olympique de Marseille was on an internship to prepare for the new season. It was therefore with the Players that the journalist looked at the final, moved by the tears of Dugarry.
But the evening almost turned badly for Pierre Ménès. The fault of Fabrizio Ravanelli. “In 1998, I was in Hendaye to follow the OM internship. We had looked at this on a giant screen with Rolland Courbis and his team, including Fabrizio Ravanelli, who wanted to break my mouth because he thought I had written an article on him at the time of his simulation against Paris, when I had not written anything. He thus entrusted in a new video broadcast on his YouTube channel.
In the fall of 1997, during a PSG-OM shock, Fabrizio Ravanelli, in the fight with Eric Rabesandratana, had been guilty of a gross simulation by making a car hook before collapsing in the area. The referee lets himself be fooled and grants a penalty that Laurent Blanc transforms, OM taking advantage to win 2-1 at the Parc des Princes. A lively controversy followed, the Italian striker living very badly the criticisms of which he had been the object.
