Régis Le Bris, the coach of Sunderland, promoted from the Championship this season, became the third French coach to win his first Premier League match after Arsène Wenger with Arsenal and Alain Perrin with Portsmouth. The Black Cats started with a success against Brentford on August 30, and their 5th victory of the season, Saturday at Chelsea (1-2), even propelled them to 2nd place in the standings before Sunday's matches. What to equal Jean Tigana?
Tigana indeed achieved the “feat” of moving up from English D2 to find himself European the following year. The Cottagers won the First Division (the name of D2 at the time) in 2001 thanks to Louis Saha's 27 goals. The club chaired by Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed then recruited Steve Marlet, Luis Boa Morte, Steed Malbranque, Sylvain Legwinski, Abdeslam Ouaddou and Edwin van der Sar.
Fulham FC finished in a disappointing 13th place (Saha and Marlet only scored 9 goals each) but were invited to play in the 2002 Intertoto Cup, with UEFA rewarding the fairest teams in the championships. The Intertoto is a summer tournament created in the 1960s at the request of sports bettors (toto is the name of the sports lotto in Germany) and UEFA took over this competition to make it a pre-season access to its UEFA Cup, from 1995 to 2008.
The Fulham of a great Malbranque
The Craven Cottage residents eliminated FC Haka, Egaleo City and FC Sochaux-Montbéliard before a final won against Bologna, with a 3-1 victory in the return match, with a hat-trick from Japanese midfielder Jun'ichi Inamoto.
This Fulham of “Jeannot” Tigana, led by a great Steed Malbranque (author of 13 goals in 2002-2003), went through two rounds of the UEFA Cup against Hajduk Split (2-3 on aggregate) and Dinamo Zagreb (5-1 on aggregate), but fell in the round of 16 against Hertha Berlin (1-2 on aggregate). A first European participation which left its mark on West London supporters (even if the C3 matches took place at Loftus Road, the QPR venue). Sunderland fans are also dreaming of a European Cup, 52 years after a Cup Winners' Cup run. They will thank their
french manager Régis Le Bris.
