Zapping Goal! Football club AS Saint-Etienne newspaper: Can we believe in better days?
Postponement for Puel we wrote after the draw obtained by Wabhi Khazri in Metz. But there was an appeal and the sentence demanded by the ultras dressed in the attorney general’s garb fell. Logical because in the face of the prosecution, the voice of the lawyers had become inaudible to the cohort of prosecution witnesses. We have never seen a coach get unanimous support at ASSE, but Claude Puel has managed to crystallize so much internal criticism that his seat, from the Executive Board chair, has become an ejection jump seat.
At the end of October, there had already been the Angevin miracle, without silencing the little sentences, the strokes of a penknife and a pencil to scribble the personality of a man “cleavage who does nothing to conquer his world” we explain- us by citing relatives of the club who are not his friends. “He has no affect, that’s the problem” said one of them, while another estimated “that he wants to show that it is he who decides and that he has a tendency to pull the plug. blanket “. A third described him as “narrow-minded”.
“If he’s a coach who doesn’t have that human side that is essential in life, it’s a shame”
On Sunday, even before the decision to dismiss him was made, the way out was clear to avoid the deadlock. “Otherwise, it’s dead,” blurted out a technician present at the reserve game. We quickly understood that on the floor above, the ax had fallen, weighted down by the shareholders, made evident of an incompatibility between the personality of the one they call CP and a club built on relationships human, an elevated city with values of sharing. And sharing, Puel does not know! “He doesn’t listen to anyone,” analyzes one leader, noting that, like in any business, the dirty work is up to the CEO, not the chairmen. This, we understood, hardly Claude Puel out of what was his last press conference in Saint-Etienne. If he refused us any comment, Jean-François Soucasse had a closed face, a gray complexion, and clenched teeth. No need to talk. Beyond the result, he was at the foot of the wall of his responsibilities, of his position as decision-maker responsible for correcting the errors made by those who pay him to hold the umbrella.
On social networks, if many are congratulating themselves on the change “It was time … Hoping that it is not too late to raise the bar”, most target the presidents, “they decide when to lay off too ? “.
Did they really believe in the alchemy of the one they presented as a builder? Roland Romeyer idealizing “Puel will make young people play which has not always been the case”, when the objective was above all to value, in the literal sense, the players resulting from the formation. With the risk of a sporting setback not assumed when we transfer Saliba, Fofana, Honorat until the team is bloodless. This makes supporters say that “Even the best coach in the world will not transform Krasso into Georges Weah” and that “The solution can only come from the players”.
Not enough to exonerate a coach whose choices we don’t always understand, when he sidelined executives as if they were kids, when he clashes with Ruffier; gives the armband to Camara, who has only one season to go; refuses several recruits presented by the recruitment unit; validates the arrival of Ramirez left behind.
His last match is more than symbolic with Trauco replacing when it would have been necessary to block the corridors, Aouchiche preferred to Bouanga, no defensive block. Even his speech the day before, in which he claimed to have programmed Genesio to become a coach, stuck to the caricature of the “I” made by his detractors. And there are more and more of them. The shareholders believe that “the players have let go of their coach” and that this dismissal is ultimately “a relief”. Maybe but we will be especially relieved when the team starts winning again …
Didier BIGARD
to summarize
Didier Bigard looks back on ASSE’s decision to separate from Claude Puel, and on the last losing choices of Castres during the fiasco against Rennes (0-5) … “His last match is more than symbolic with Trauco replacing when it would have been necessary to block the corridors, Aouchiche preferred to Bouanga, no defensive block “, he laments.
