They prefer to grill themselves a merguez to a sound from Jul rather than putting their attacker called “Djoul” into orbit in the opposing area. Zero victories, three draws and 12 defeats, for 74 goals conceded, is the catastrophic record of Olympique Noves in the depths of the Grand Vaucluse district. We are in Departmental 4 of the Mediterranean League, the 11th level in France! Their savior? The legendary Rolland Courbis.
The former coach of OM, Montpellier and Stade Rennais settled in Noves, a town of 6,000 inhabitants in Bouches-du-Rhône on the outskirts of Avignon. After Pascal Dupraz, who had taken over “the worst team” from the Paris region (Fontenay-le-Vicomte), it is Courbis who immerses himself in an extraordinary sporting and human adventure within football from below, for the second season of the mini-series The heroes of the lawnbroadcast on France 3 and available free of charge on France.tv.
Rolland Courbis, 72, has not held a coaching position since 2019 and a stint at SM Caen (for a 19th place in Ligue 1 with Yacine Bammou and Enzo Crivelli in attack). The man who has been a radio and TV consultant for many years (RMC and now the L'Equipe channel) thus discovered a particularly disorganized group of players, made up of students, young professionals or fathers with families with the nicknames “Pépito”, “Kiwi”, “Shrek” or “Hospice”. This happy band is eagerly awaiting the Noves ferias rather than their next match on muddy ground.
Rolland Courbis, for “pleasure”
“When I was young, I also experienced amateur football and I had the chance to make it my profession. I only have good memories and it made me happy to help them practice this sport with a little more pleasure, because if you do anything, if it's to lose 6 or 7 to 0, you might as well not play. Yes, we love football and we love playing ball, but you have to love winning. Even at the highest level, you have to know how to have fun playing football and I happened to have a team that had a lot of fun while obtaining the best possible results”thus launches Courbis to
French Football Weekly.
Rolland Courbis has immense experience as a coach. A central defender who worked for OM or Monaco, he quickly became a coach, starting at Toulon in 1986. In addition to seeing his players enjoy themselves, “Coach Courbis” does everything possible to find the best complementarities. “If the right center back doesn't get along with his right side, it's very annoying. I am the guide who tries to make people understand that simple things in a group can be a lot of fun.”.
And run: “That's one of my favorite lines in the show, I say: 'shit, when you make a pass at your partner, make the pass you would have liked to receive'. I, a little vulgar that I am, said to him: 'if you throw a sausage in his balls, it's not a pass' ». This Marseillais – with an accent that is still as pronounced despite his many years in the media – perfectly shook the players of Olympique Noves, district grass heroes like so many others.
