The youngest supporters of the French team do not know it, but before the implementation of the impeccable duo Grégoire Margotton-Bixente Lizarazu in 2016, the commentators of the Blues of TF1 sometimes divided. Before Margotton, Christian Jeanpierre was a commentator decried from 2008 to 2016, in particular because he was less sharp than his predecessor Thierry Gilardi. After the illustrious Thierry Roland, who formed a legendary duo with Jean-Michel Larqué despite frequent slippages, the front page recruited at Canal+ in 2005, offering the services of Gilardi.
Thierry Gilardi scored a real turning point in the comment of football matches on a public channel. He was both a remarkable commentator and a real sports journalist. And for good reason, the presenter of Football day from 1992 to 1995 and The Sunday team From 1995 to 2002 became the large “voice” of the round ball on the encrypted chain. He commented on the matches of the French team of Aimé Jacquet at the 98 World Cup to coronation against Brazil, C+ also having the rights of the competition.
Alongside Larqué (and Arsène Wenger), Gilardi was thus in charge of TF1 retransmissions at the 2006 World Cup to the final lost against Italy at the penalty shootout and the famous shot of Zinédine Zidane on Marco Materazzi. It was therefore just three years after his arrival in the TF1 group that Thierry Gilardi died at the age of only 49, succumbing to a heart attack on Tuesday, March 25, 2008. The native of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was a big smoker.
Thierry Gilardi upsets the Stade de France
France was then in shock. The world of football and all the media, not only athletic, paid a unanimous tribute to Thierry Gilardi. The director of TF1 Nunce Paolini took the floor in The 13 -hour newspaper de Jean-Pierre Pernaut, then in The 20 hours by Patrick Poivre d'Arvor.
The next day, the French team played a friendly match against England in Saint-Denis. The president of the FFF Jean-Pierre Escalettes paid tribute to Gilardi and announced a minute of silence before the kick-off of the meeting at the Stade de France. The tricolor players then carried a black and Franck Ribéry armband, the ” little “ From Thierry Gilardi to France-Spain at the 2006 World Cup, paid him a magnificent tribute by revealing a message on his t-shirt after a penalty transformed in front of David James.
