The end of the season is fast approaching in Ligue 1, but the time for balance sheets has obviously not yet struck for everyone. In a decision as spectacular as late, an elite club, stuck in the depths of the classification and almost sentenced to relegation, chose to separate from his coach on Monday.
Only six short days at the end of the championship, this timing questions: is it a desperate electric shock, an observation of mutual failure, or a way of anticipating next season in Ligue 2? The cleaver has fallen, leaving an empty touch bench and many in suspense questions.
Gasset is experiencing a very complicated end of career.
The thanked coach is none other than Jean-Louis Gasset, and the club concerned is Montpellier Hérault SC. Arrived as a service firefighter to try an almost impossible rescue mission, the experienced technician was removed from his functions “By mutual agreement” With its leaders, as the Hérault club officially announced on Monday, April 7. It must be said that the sporting situation is catastrophic: after 28 days, the MHSC is last in Ligue 1, with only 11 points behind the place of barragist. The defeat of last weekend against Le Havre (0-2), a direct competitor, sounded the death knell of the last hopes of maintenance. For Montpellier, it is already the second dismissed coach this season, after Michel Der Zakarian.
End of sausage in sausage water for Gasset?
For Jean-Louis Gasset, this Montpellier experience runs short and added to a black series. At 71, the one who had long assisted Laurent Blanc in his various missions, seems to see his main coach career ending on a bitter note. His failed passage at the head of the Côte d'Ivoire selection during the last CAN, followed by a failure in Marseille and another in Montpellier, marks a difficult end of the course for the respected technician. Arrived with the potential savior label, he will not have managed to reverse the trend of a perdition team.
This change of coach six days from the end appears above all as a symbol of the “Annus horribilis” experienced by the Pailladin club. With a relegation to Ligue 2 which now seems inevitable and could even be mathematically confirmed by the 30th day, this departure is more like an observation of helplessness than a real sports electroshoc.
For Montpellier, the time is already for the preparation of next season at the lower level, while for Jean-Louis Gasset, this is perhaps the end of a long career on the sidelines.
