The only surprise may be the date.
But at least Raymond Domenech will have marked the history of FC Nantes.
Evicted by Waldemar Kita after 40 days and seven games, the former Blues boss despite himself broke the record for the shortest term as coach under the Kita era.
Previously, it was Jean-Marc Furlan, who was accompanied in 2010 to the exit of La Jonelière after two months and nine meetings, who held the sad prize.
Place now in Antoine Kombouaré, a former member of the house, who will become the 19th coach of Waldemar Kita.
The fall continues for a club which therefore has more coaches this season (4) than successes (3) ...
Even the last episode is inelegant with a Domenech fired while his team was eliminated at home in the Coupe de France against Lens (2-4).
He, because of a false positive test for Covid-19, had been quarantined.
It will therefore be the longest quarantine in the world for a coach who, like others before him, was therefore not immune to his president.
The failure of cuddle therapy
But, even without that, the story between Kita and Domenech could not last.
The president wanted a firefighter to put out the fire and the coach had decided to play the builders.
And it is not with a trowel that we calm Kita's impatience.
It was just before Christmas that he had chosen Domenech.
Like an impulse purchase to be placed at the foot of the tree and based on instinct.
As a business manager, Kita opted for the former coach of the France team.
A fluid, an assurance in the eyes of the latter were enough to take the bet.
It was to forget that the ex-Lyonnais, 69, had not led a club for 28 years and that his experience as a coach is useless.
“Before, when Raymond was not happy with one player, he would select another.
There, he will have to do with what he has at hand, one of his relatives worried.
It's not the same job.
"
The first days were however happy.
Domenech was sincere in recounting his pleasure in rediscovering "the smell of lawns."
“But all his desire to come back, he did not measure how he came to the bedside of a dying man who remained in eight games without a win and whose current no longer passed with his predecessor Christian Gourcuff.
Domenech took the opposite approach to the methods of the taciturn Breton.
He reconnected with the rest of the Nantes trainers, angry with Gourcuff and tried, in vain, cuddle therapy and little jokes with players, the majority of whom had typed their name on Wikipedia to find out their pedigree except for the fiasco of Knysna ...
Under the Domenech era, Nantes became barrage
The timing didn't help him either.
An icy Breton derby against Rennes (0-0) to start and then another draw a little more solid in Montpellier (1-1) instilled in Domenech the certainty that it was through the concrete game that he was going to leave. exit.
"I want us to be boring to play," he said.
His team mostly got ugly to watch.
And the schedule didn't help him with the receptions in Monaco and Lille.
Nantes did not win any more and Kita got annoyed.
The leader of men he thought he had unearthed got tangled up like the others with his rickety workforce.
His changes in tactical scheme (4-4-2 then 4-1-4-1) or point attacker were ineffective.
In seven games, Nantes has only really been good once, in Saint-Etienne but without succeeding in winning (1-1).
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And Domenech refused, at the end of the transfer window, to bring in two players (Stiven Mendoza from Amiens and Adam Ounas from Crotone) proposed by Kita.
With the latter, it takes victories to pass refusals.
The last Lille loss (0-2) was not the problem.
The concern is that he installed Nantes in the place of barrage while Saint-Etienne and Lorient won.
Panicked, Kita realized that his foolish bet could not last any longer.
And after 40 days, Domenech resumed his desert crossing.