Coach Luis Enrique, during a press conference at the PSG training center, in Poissy (Yvelines), July 5, 2023. AURELIEN MORISSARD / AP
For Ligue 1 enthusiasts, the start of the 2023-2024 season on Friday August 11 could be somewhat confusing. Not that the clash between Nice and Lille (9 p.m., on Prime Video) is out of the ordinary; but the followers of the French championship will have to get used to the passage from twenty to eighteen clubs – a first since 2002 – and to the new faces present on the benches. Among them, the Spaniards Luis Enrique (PSG), Marcelino (Marseille) and Carles Martinez Novell (Toulouse), the Austrian Adi Hütter (Monaco) or the Italian Francesco Farioli (Nice).
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All took office this summer and represent, with the Portuguese Paulo Fonseca (Lille), the Slovenian Luka Elsner (Le Havre), the Belgian-British Will Still (Reims) and the Romanian Laszlo Bölöni (Metz), 50% of the technicians of Ligue 1 – i.e. the highest rate of foreign coaches ever recorded in the French championship. The latter is still far from Premier League standards – where only four out of twenty benches are occupied by English people – but the situation raises questions.
By favoring foreign coaches, are the leaders of Ligue 1 clubs showing their disapproval of local technicians? “This phenomenon is mainly due to a lack of knowledge of French coaches on the part of owners who are increasingly internationalized”rectifies Hubert Fournier, responsible for defining a guideline for French football, as national technical director (DTN) of the French Football Federation (FFF).
Eleven Ligue 1 clubs are majority owned by owners with an international profile, who do not automatically appoint a coach from their country. Why, then, not turn to the French? The president of Olympique de Marseille, Pablo Longoria, gave part of the answer in 2021 in an interview with The country : “In France, there is no game model. If we analyze the world level, it is one of the countries that exports the fewest coaches. They do not sell collective ideas. »
The dogma of single thought
Unlike the Spaniards, the Italians or the Germans, who each have a school of thought, French coaches do not have their own method. “We did not succeed in conveying an idea, admits Raymond Domenech, president of Unecatef, the coaches’ union. Coaches are identified with a method. There are marks, but the French don’t have any. »
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