The mention of Knysna inevitably brings back very bad memories. The 2010 World Cup and the bus strike constitute one of the worst sequences for the France team. This particularly applies to Yoann Gourcuff, expected to be the technical leader of the Blues and passed through in South Africa. But according to many witnesses, the former Bordeaux player would not have been helped by his teammates, first and foremost Franck Ribéry, who saw him as a rival and would have made life difficult for him.
As evidenced by the scene recounted by Raymond Domenech in his book All alone, “I said to Gourcuff: ‘I gave you the keys, it’s up to you!’ The worst, at this precise moment, is the look of Franck RibĂ©ry. Maybe I’m being dramatic, but I saw hatred, contempt or jealousy in his eyes. He doesn’t like her, that’s for sure.” he remembered, also focusing on a training where “RibĂ©ry and others had killed the session because Gourcuff was in their team. He didn’t see anything, he suffered and I told myself that he remained in his world of care bears. »
A vision corroborated by journalist Gilles Verdez who indeed recounted in his book The hidden face of Franck Ribéry that the former Marseillais had encouraged some of his teammates to tap the Bordeaux player on the head when he got on the bus. According to one of his friends, the one who finished his career in Dijon lived
“terrible things in Knysna”. An opinion shared by the journalist Jacques Besnard to whom Christian Gourcuff, his father, had made him understand that “some players did not spare him. »
“ This is completely false! »
PHowever, Jérémy Toulalan, close to Yoann Gourcuff, had denied all these rumors. “This is completely false!” I even heard that I had separated Franck (Ribéry) and Yo (Gourcuff): complete rubbish! There was no altercation between them,” he assured in the columns of Sunday Journal. A version obviously confirmed by Franck Ribéry, who assured that he had never had a problem with Yoann Gourcuff.
Same story in the mouth of Djibril CissĂ© “I heard that RibĂ©ry was making Gourcuff miserable and that there had been a slap. But was I there or what? What is this bullshit? “, did he last spring First Team Sportadding: “Afterwards, they have the right to say that he is not my cup of tea, etc… But to say that Franck was making Yoann miserable, that he was doing this, that he was doing that, stop! We’re not in college, we have to stop. And then there is a coach, he would have seen it, right? »
