Long before the coronations of OM and PSG in the Champions League, in 1993 and 2025, each time in Munich, AS Saint-Etienne offered the very first epic of French football in the European Cup, in 1976, for a defeat in the final against Bayern (0-1). Stade de Reims had failed twice in the final of the Champion Clubs’ Cup, but that was in the 1950s and football was only written about in the newspapers. The 1970s marked a turning point with the broadcasting of meetings and the Greens were buoyed by unprecedented enthusiasm throughout France.
The young coach Robert Herbin, promoted to the bench while he was until then central defender of the team, relied on some of his former teammates, including midfielders Jacques Santini and Jean-Michel Larqué, and young people trained at the club, spotted all over France by the sports director (Pierre Garonnaire), such as Christian Lopez, Dominique Bathenay and Dominique Rocheteau. ASSE also built this superb team with two choice recruits named Ivan Curkovic and Oswaldo Piazza.
Under the leadership of a coach with particularly modern methods, who demanded high-intensity races, the Stéphanois defeated Glasgow Rangers, made a comeback against Dyanmo kyiv (2-0 defeat in Crimea, 3-0 victory after extra time at Geoffroy-Guichard) and eliminated PSV in the semi-finals on a single free kick from Larqué (1-0, 0-0). The final against Franz Beckenbauer’s Bayern (0-1) gives the famous story of the “square posts”, Santini and Bathenay touching the uprights.
Larqué: “A trainer with new methods”
Jean-Michel Larqué announced the death of Robert Herbin on April 27, 2020 at the age of 81. “He is a coach who brought new methods to the work of preparing teams. I spent years with Robert as a player and then with him as a coach, I never heard him raise his voice. He was a complicated man, but that was his charm. We weren’t on very good terms when I left Saint-Etienne, but I really liked the man. I was saddened to see some articles talking about his addiction, his complicated character. He had so many good qualities that we would have done better to talk about them before he was gone”had launched “Captain Larqué” on RMC.
And to continue his homage to the “Sphinx” (nickname given by Jacques Vendroux at the time): “His talks were very limited. He was stingy with his words, but he knew how to get his messages across. We worked a lot in training. He was still a player when he became a coach. There was no transition year. He trusted us a lot. Maybe he was complicated, but he had a lot of trust in his players. I keep the image of someone who was secret. I have fabulous images that are from our world. When I was starting out at the age of 18 and a half, I had the seat right across from Robby in the locker room. At the end of the matches, he took off his shoes, but before taking off his socks, he shot a gypsy girl without a filter. But he was a fabulous athlete. We, the Greens of 76, we all know what we owe him. » French football will remember this.
