“Louis Nicollin, Luis Fernandez, Laurent Blanc, I forget one or two but there, they are turns”. At 71, when he returned to the service in Montpellier (after announcing his retirement last year), Jean-Louis Gasset made “The assessment of (his) life” By quoting people who have changed his coach career. The very experienced technician is questioned by the YouTube channel Light cities And pay a superb tribute to the white “president”. Emblematic MHSC player from 1975 to 1985, he then became a trainer and then assistant and number 1 of the first team and saw the young Laurent Blanc of his Gard Natal land.
A talented attacking midfielder at the time, Blanc was trained in Montpellier and played no less than eight seasons with the HĂ©rault team (278 matches, 82 goals). It was well before becoming a manager of the French team, as a central defender, and winning the 98 World Cup then Euro 2000. After his end of career (last two seasons at Manchester United), Blanc obtained his coach diploma and asked Gasset to be his assistant. “JLG” had been number 2 of Luis Fernandez at PSG and Espanyol in Barcelona before taking the reins of Istres (and being turned). At 53, he thought himself at the end of the course before Laurent Blanc's call.
Laurent Blanc and his experienced assistant Jean-Louis Gasset.
“When I'm a bit in the hollow of the wave, it is he who calls me in 2007 to tell me 'Are you working with me?'. Each year, we saw each other, with all his past experiences with United, Milan, Barcelona, ​​always gave me the difference from one country to another on work. There, we both had an appointment, he followed me, I followed him. One day he phoned me and asked me 'You work with me?', 'Of course I work with you.' I thought I had done my time, I had made Paris, the European Cup, the Espanyol of Barcelona, ​​the stranger, it was hot and there I was in a standstill ”says Gasset.
Laurent Blanc's essential assistant
Funny little story: Laurent Blanc, 41, first announces to his former coach that he will become the coach of AS Monaco. But it is Ricardo who leaves Bordeaux for the Principality and the 98 world champion thus arrives in Gironde. Gasset continues:
“The story starts again, I was at the start of a player, I protected it, there he was at his start as a coach and he took me, the clubs said to him: 'You don't have enough experience'.
We told him that once, twice, three times, so he said to himself: 'I will find the experience and find the person who suits me well'. It was his first mission “. The FCGB is champion of France in 2009, with a Yoann Gourcuff on fire, but Gasset also remembers the announcement of the departure of Laurent Blanc, in early 2010, for the French team which completely dropped the Aquitaine training in the second part of the season (for the benefit of the OM of … Didier Deschamps!).
In this interview, Gasset also returns to his first week of training at PSG, in the summer of 2013, Laurent Blanc having won the first three titles of champion at the start of the Qatari era: “They arrive, Ibrahimovic, Thiago Motta, Thiago Silva, Maxwell, 'Good morning'they do not know if I am the cook, Laurent Blanc he knew, but Jean-Louis Gasset no. They don't know my role. At one point, they see that Laurent Blanc gets far away and that it is I who directs. And to win the confidence of players like that, who have known the Grail, the biggest matches, you need a little courage, notch, you have to be sure. They are waiting for you to give the mechanism. How we attack, how we defend, how we press. Once it is clear, the match belongs to them. ”
