Gottéron gave the championship title as a goal for the season. And after failing against Lugano, they didn’t even make the play-off. Does the recently premature end of the season heal the club from the astonishing bondage to the previously undisputed sole ruler Christian Dubé?
High expenses, low success rate: Gottéron’s coach/sport manager Christian Dubé.
Gottéron’s season came to an abrupt end on Thursday evening in Lugano in the pre-play-off. Yet again. Since reaching the finals in 2013, the team has won two more playoff series. And in the eight years of Christian Dubé’s reign, only one. It is a devastating balance sheet, which the jovial French Canadian has always been able to explain verbosely. Sometimes savings were to blame, sometimes the referees, sometimes the players, some of whom he publicly criticized. And anyway: The coach can’t score the goals himself, that’s one of Dubé’s favorite sentences. It’s true, of course, but Dubé has been responsible for putting together the squad since 2015. It is he who should have ensured that there were enough players on the payroll to score. The manager didn’t manage that with the foreigners in particular: Gottéron’s sextet only scored 66 goals. For comparison: It was 99 for the qualifying winner Geneva/Servette.