The scene is described in an issue of France football from June 1967. Stéphane coach Jean Snella instituted a weekly meal at the club. Today, there are 13 of them, Batteux is seated to his right as a symbol. The two men like each other and are friends. Snella has a boundless admiration for Batteux since Sweden in 1958. He remembers his famous talks which make matches win before having played them.
Batteux has just refused an offer from Reims which counts, among the new leaders, Serge his nephew. It’s too late, our hearts are broken, and we never recover from a disappointed love.
He considers the Grenoble experiment a failure. “I took a good lesson in humility in Dauphiné. Regardless, he has received offers from Atlético Madrid and the Swiss federation. Its rating is still intact.
He passionately followed the 1966 World Cup for a national daily. In short, he regains a taste for football. And the Stéphanois challenge attracts him: to continue the work of Jean Snella, who has already put the Greens in charge of French football. And make it grow, go even higher.
However, he has everything to lose: a second place would be a failure and the European Cup too uncertain. Snella gives him a final piece of advice: “Be yourself, don’t think about me anymore.” With you, it’s like I’m living in this house for a while… “Albert signs a three-year contract.
His role changes in an already well structured club. “Our job is more and more that of the English manager, that of a sporting director rather than that of a man on the ground. In Saint-Étienne, for example, I can no longer demonstrate football. Our work is more a question of psychology, ”he testified in May 1968.
His conception of the game
The football of the 1960s was marked by tactical discussions, relayed by the press of the time, Football magazine, Football mirror or France football : possession game? 4-2-4 or concrete? Online defense or individual marking? Obviously, Batteux’s intelligence, in addition to making him win, drives him to be the herald of certain types of games.
Short pass or long pass? “What is true in football is to play fair. If a team scores a goal after two assists, I say “it’s good.” If she scores a goal after 25 assists, I also say “it’s a good game.” The bottom line is the result. “
Regarding the game plan, “I’m not a fan of online defense. Reims once built excellent football without defense either online or offside ”. He also played short football, so short that it was called a “little game”.
Reims hardly shot: his players brought the ball very close to the goal. The line is certainly valid for a strong team but not for a weak team whose defense will be often called upon. This line is fragile. The slightest error of judgment can be fatal.
His psychological approach
The characteristic of Batteux, in addition to the champagne football that its teams develop, is to make the great players play well together. “Understand that a Kopa or a Jacowski is not comparable to a Marche… that each has his own personality, that we must take each one as he is and above all see in people, first their qualities, then their defaults. When I was a player, I did not understand that the coach addressed his most virulent criticisms to the youngsters, to the little ones. And don’t say anything to the elders, to the stars. This is a lack of psychology. “
On the contrary, his psychological approach is thorough and positive. “I find in my team everything I have known in my family. Moreover, the eleven players of a team can, in a way, be compared to a family since they are obliged to live for a certain time together, to harmonize their character, to melt their temperament, to achieve a synthesis. . “
For him, “the main quality of a coach is psychology. Because if scientific knowledge of training, organization, tactics is essential, it hardly varies from country to country, from one coach to another. In a team, different personalities are gathered: young people full of enthusiasm, others who have already arrived. And yet, at the kick-off, everyone must be filled with the desire to win. “
His appointment as coach in 1950 drew criticism from the landernau. He knows he is being watched and addresses his players: “They say I will not succeed because you are my friends. So I’m just asking you to turn the problem around and allow me to succeed, precisely because you are my friends. If it’s true that you like me, you will make it easier for me. ” He understood everything.
Drummers and the great soloists: Kopa and Keita
In Sainté, he directs a pillar of the locker room, Herbin, with whom relations are unequal and sometimes fresh, and an icon of the public: Rachid Mekloufi. Rachid is the key man, the decisive player who is nearing the end of his career.
Precisely, a little prodigy arrived in the fall of 1967: Salif Keita. Batteux takes the young Malian under his wing. He even accommodates him at his home, in Grenoble, to spend the Christmas holidays with his family. If Mekloufi is Snella’s man, Keita embodies the Batteux era: a brilliant team sublimated by a soloist considered by some to be the best player in club history.
Because Batteux knows how to play the great men. In Reims, he had already “grown” Raymond Kopa. Their first meeting dates back to a sixth tournament in Angers in 1951. They are opposed in the final. Kopa dribbles, makes him dizzy. Batteux wants him, takes him in, takes him under his wing, his reputation as an individualist and his bad temper.
ASSE-Munich in the Coupe d ‘… by Le Progrès Loire on Scribd
Kopa will not forget: “He was able to defend me, understand me, encourage me. He didn’t teach me anything “Bébert” from a technical point of view, but he gave birth to my personality. Without Albert Batteux, I might have just been a good little player without more. “
The heyday of Saint-Etienne
Until the Carnus-Bosquier affair which broke out in May 1971, Albert Batteux’s record was close to perfection: three consecutive French champion titles (1968-1970) including two doubled (1968 and 1970), goals in shambles , an audience that enjoys the best show in France.
As a bonus, the Greens achieved their first European feat against Bayern Munich (0-2, 3-0) in October 1969. A few matches marked the spirits like the two finals won. The first sees the last match of Mekloufi who wins the trophy alone with a double (a penalty and a sumptuous volley), the second is a demonstration, 5-0 against Nantes, never seen in the final.
He knows how to play the stars of Saint-Etienne (Carnus, Herbin, Bosquier, Larqué, Hervé Revelli, Keita, Bereta) but also prepares the future generation since Lopez, Synaeghel, Bathenay, Santini, Patrick Revelli already train with professionals and play already occasionally in the first team.
We know the rest. It will be without him and with Robert Herbin. In June 1972, Albert Batteux left Saint-Étienne. He is 53 years old and the splendor of his career is already behind him.
The 1970s of a tired coach
“When I am no longer coach of Saint-Étienne, I will take at least six months of vacation. He has lived for football since he was a teenager and would like to think and live for something else. At least for a while. “I said to myself that it was well worth having worked to acquire a certain well-being, to own a farm in Grenoble and a small house in Corsica and only to enjoy it for 15-20 days a year. “
He has contacts with radio, television, a proposal from the French football federation and would like to do a speaking tour in France. He will finally take the direction of Nancy. President Cuny convinces him to accept a role of sporting director, a little further from the field than before.
He is a technician with a sharp soul who arrives in Lorraine and writes a column in red thistle, the organ of the club. “When I hear about the evolution of football today, which is increasingly more physical, plus this, plus that, I am left in awe. I have always said and believed that football requires a set of qualities that cannot be separated. Football remains a game where the intelligence of the player must be constantly on the alert. “
If AS Nancy Lorraine has good results, 4th in December 1972, the rather rigid and defensive game as well as the world of football no longer suit him. He underwent knee surgery at the beginning of 1974. His overly administrative role raised questions for him, especially since he liked living in Grenoble.
ASSE-Angoulême in the Coupe de … by Le Progrès Loire on Scribd
“In current football, we swear by the words” work “,” rigor “,” discipline “. You would think you were hearing heads of state or ministers. We forget that football involves the game, the pleasure of playing, the technique … I think what I would like is living in Grenoble in a rural setting. To give conferences for the propaganda of good football, to write a few articles… ”
“I have passed the age of great adventures”
He left Nancy and then only experienced brief experiences of rescue, as in Avignon, in the second division, in May 1976. He trained Nice in 1978-79 then retired once maintenance was assured. His last experience, at Olympique de Marseille in the second division, shows him that the profession is no longer made for him. “I have passed the age of great adventures,” he testifies in La Tribune-Le Progrès in September 1980. “OM must be taken over by someone with ambitions that I no longer have. “
It then becomes, once the milestone of sixty is crossed, a wise and listened observatory in the world of football. He writes a tactical column every week in the columns of France football. He finally knows what he has been waiting for a long time: the simple life in the Grenoble countryside.
Around 1993, her doctor detected the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Write chronicles for France football becomes an ordeal. “Before, he would lock himself in his office and write for two hours. And then he needed a weekend. One day, we said stop, ”recalls her daughter, Brigitte Dumat.
Albert Batteux passed away on February 28, 2003, a few hours before a quarter-final between two resurrected footballers: Saint-Étienne and Marseille. Albert Batteux is like his two former teams: legends never really die.