When he refused the Blues, his passage to PSG and modern football ... the good sheets of the biography of Alain Giresse

“Born to play” (Robert Laffont, 19 euros) comes out this Thursday.

Alain Giresse, emblematic figure of the French team, European champion 84 and semi-finalist of the Worlds 82 and 84 and coach of several African teams, tells himself for the first time.

Here are some of the good sheets from the book.

1. "I refused to become the coach of the France team"

“On May 1, 1998, I refused to become the coach of the France team. This mandate would have started after the World Cup in France. This May 1, I was at home in Toulouse when I received a phone call from Noël Le Graët, the president of the National Football League. He wanted to see me urgently and ordered a private plane from me to Saint-Brieuc while he was in Guingamp, where he lives when he leaves Paris. I met him in a restaurant and he explained his project to me:

As you know, Aimé Jacquet stops after the World Cup, whether he wins it or not. I would like you to be his successor. The place is yours.

He offered me the job of coach, my first coaching offer!

I was 45 and I refused because I was still a little young.

I first wanted to train in a club, to have solid experience working with a team on a daily basis.

I was not mature enough.

Looking back, I don't regret anything.

I then lacked too many elements in the pedagogical and human approach to slip into the clothes of a good coach.

Noël Le Graët was disappointed, he had insisted that I come, but he understood me.

The meal took place with great courtesy.

"

2. At PSG, "the operation of the club was not good"

“At the end of May 1998, the Canal + journalist Charles Biétry called me:

I am going to take over the presidency of PSG and I would like you to be its trainer.

He told me about a project where the club would keep a family dimension. There would be just him and me, no sports director, to make coherent decisions, in connection with the shareholder, Canal +. It was not today's PSG, but the context was the same. Paris was the most media team in France, along with Marseille. Playing at the Parc des Princes had a singular and unique scent, with this mythical load of the matches of the French team, where we won the 1984 European Championship. The World Cup in France had not yet taken place. I did not understand the context of Paris, with its often irrational hypermedia, but I accepted Biétry's proposal. I had known him for a long time, through our professional relations, him as a reporter at Agence France Presse then at Canal +,me as a football player.

To me he was "Charles". This proximity seemed logical to me. He chose me, I didn't even have to seduce him. The collaboration seemed to me to start off on a good basis, healthy in any case. I signed a three-year contract and arrived with crazy ambition. (…) I arrived at PSG in June without having yet met anyone in the general staff. I found that curious. No manager of Canal +, the parent company. No “historic” leader, that's what they were called. Neither Alain Cayzac, nor Charles Talar, nor Bernard Brochand. I wasn't asking for anything, I didn't know how the club worked or what they represented. I only met them once, when I was kicked out a few months later, in October. " I am happy to meet you ! Was the first thing I told them.The preparation was not really ideal. (…) The operation of the club was not good either.

Charles Biétry wanted to be a local president, he was omnipresent, omnipotent.

In Bordeaux, President Bez, we did not see him all day.

A president must rise up and step in when the situation calls for it.

We were not at all in phase, Charles Biétry and I, the subjects of disagreement multiplied.

It sometimes happened to him, during training, to put himself in the goal during an opposition between players.

It was not the role of a president to play buddy.

Charles didn't mean to hurt, but he wasn't in the president's costume at those times.

"

3. "Clubs suddenly lose their identity"

“What bothers me is that these clubs suddenly lose their identity, their specificity, their local and regional representations.

I know what I'm talking about with the Girondins de Bordeaux who have been taken over by American investors, called King Street.

This investment fund decided to withdraw on April 22, 2021. What was it doing in the Girondins?

Business!

Americans never understood what a football club was.

They degraded it, from a sporting, financial, popular and media point of view.

Each club has an identity linked to its history.

(…) The Girondins de Bordeaux are part of the city's heritage.

I have no rights and I do not claim anything.

Read alsoFive minutes to understand the unprecedented crisis in the Girondins de Bordeaux

But I remain attentive. I am Girondin. I stayed there for 22 years. No player has worn this jersey more than me, no player has scored more goals than me with the colors navy and white. I didn't take up football to achieve those two records, but I broke them and I'm proud of them. I am a supporter of Bordeaux and I will remain so until the end. (…) I am marine and white for life. I embody a piece of the history of this club. When I go back, everything goes without fuss. The Girondins, the public of supporters, appreciate me, I believe, because I am one of them, from the region. I am loved through the player that I was and the Girondin that I still am. (…) I would not like a takeover of the Girondins to change this story.Everything must be done to preserve this DNA while conforming to today's world. It is not about living in the past or nostalgia for an era that will no longer exist. Lyon, under Jean-Michel Aulas and with Bernard Lacombe as advisor, has managed to adapt to the demands of football business while respecting its deep roots. This is the model that I like. "

4. "The football world should listen to Michel Platini more"

“Michel is an alien!

We are in a supreme dimension, we touch the sublime.

I don't know what can exist above Michel.

He's hands down the greatest player I've ever played with.

He is a genius, awarded three Ballons d'Or France Football.

This is set in stone, no one can ever challenge him for this superiority.

There is also another Michel Platini, the passionate, the defender of football.

Michel is a man full of convictions, determination and commitment.

When he ran for the UEFA presidency in 2007, he said to me:

But who is going to defend our football?

He wants the green rectangle to remain the green rectangle. His reasoning fits perfectly with that of football lovers, with their expectations, with my own vision of the game. He is a man who wants to preserve the game, the players and the pleasure that we, spectators, derive from it. He is the guarantor of the game, the respect and the atmosphere. The football world should listen to Michel Platini more because what he defends is not the football of yesteryear but of tomorrow. His vision is innovative: to keep the purity of football is to rid it of everything that threatens it. He implemented financial fair play, which fights against those clubs who spend more than they earn money. A first step, a protection to avoid arriving at a closed European Super League where the sporting result will no longer condition the notion of competition.Platini protects us from an Americanization of football. I sometimes thought to myself that he was exaggerating, like when he expressed his refusal of Video Assisted Arbitration (VAR). On arrival, it was again he who was right. There was a problem, we created a new one. The arbitration is even more cacophonous than before, a real mess! "

“Born to play”, the biography of Alain Giresse published by Robert Laffont. 

“Born to play”,

by Alain Giresse, with Dominique Sévérac, published by Robert Laffont (19 euros), from this Thursday in bookstores.