This is the subject that should not be talked about too much at the moment in the premises of the Greens’ training center in Etrat. The complicated season for Stéphanois? Finances dry? Not quite. This is the book “Behind the Green Door” (Solar Editions, 432 pages, 17.90 euros) by journalist Bernard Lions, AS Saint-Etienne specialist for L’Equipe.
In this book, the author returns to unknown anecdotes from the life of the Forézien club over the past twenty years. “The trigger came in 2019 during a lunch with sponsors from ASSE,” he says. One of them told me when he saw ex-player Pascal Feindouno pass: Is he the father of Christophe Landrin’s black child, his teammate? In fact, it is an urban legend that people still believe today. In the book, Christophe Landrin dismantles, for the first time in an interview, the mechanism of this rumor. “
In total, the book tells 72 secret stories, many of which remain astounding. Like the day when the Brazilian Alex (who arrived at the club in 1999, left in 2003) attacked his coach, Frédéric Antonetti, throwing himself at him with a knife in his hand. A few days later, he was exfiltrated to Brazil.
Other stories are more recent, such as the decryption of the dismissal of goalkeeper Stéphane Ruffier or the truth about the departure of Xavier Thuilot, the right-hand man of Claude Puel, collateral victim of persistent dissensions and mutual and chronic mistrust between Roland Romeyer and Bernard Caiazzo, the two club bosses.
Is it this latest story that led the club last month to write a surprising, and disproportionate, official press release? The book is thus described as an “attempt at destabilization”, “built on sensationalism” and filled with “inaccuracies, approximations and false revelations”.
“I was really amazed at the club’s reaction,” said Bernard Lions. But I thank him warmly. The book was withdrawn just fifteen days after its publication. The leaders even called me novelist. In my wildest dreams, I never thought I would one day be officially inducted as the novelist of this great club that remains AS Saint-Etienne. “
“Blackmail from my publisher”
Then, less ironic, Bernard Lions reflects on the attitude of the club during the writing of his book. “The leaders all knew I was writing it because I had warned them. You can imagine, too, that out of the 89 anonymous people who helped me write it, there are a large number of club members. But they tried to get it banned by blackmailing my editor at the time, who also works with the club. As a result, when the book was due for release on October 8, 2020, July 12, my publisher told me that he was finally giving up on publishing it. “
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Legally, the author would then have had to wait almost two years to recover the rights to his manuscript. “I finally managed to get them back after a long process,” he continues. I contacted five publishers. Four said yes and I signed to Solar, where I had previously published Jean-François Larios’s autobiography, “I played with fire”. Contacted on this point, ASSE simply replied that “the publisher in question has the club license of AS Saint-Etienne and there are no further comments to make”.
For him, the official statement from ASSE backfired against the club. “It gave me great publicity after all. And, above all, this reaction confirmed the suspicions of the supporters on the permanent turpitudes around this two-headed leadership. When I write that one president wanted Claude Puel, while the other had recorded the return of Jean-Louis Gasset, I imagine that annoys him. There are so many things that are wrong with this club. “