"
I don't know why, I think about Bodiger with his left foot… I don't know why, I have this in my head.
This is the kind of almost mystical intuition that AS Saint-Étienne would need, at this moment, to get her head right again.
The sentence, pronounced by Pascal Dupraz and captured by the cameras of
Canal +
, wrote a crazy page in Toulouse FC history.
Yann Bodiger, a defensive midfielder who entered during the game, scored the goal of victory and therefore the maintenance of the TFC, from a free kick on the last day of Ligue 1, May 14, 2016, against Angers (2-3).
With 10 points behind the first non-relegation 10 days from the end, the Violets seemed doomed.
But in two and a half months, Pascal Dupraz breathed new life into the Toulouse club, completing a commando operation that made him a character.
To discover
Ligue 1 fixtures and results
League 1 standings
Playing the maintenance in Ligue 1, Pascal Dupraz is broken there. The 59-year-old technician has done it three seasons in a row with Evian Thonon-Gaillard. The former striker discovered FC Gaillard (which would become Football Croix-de-Savoie, then Olympique Croix-de-Savoie and finally ETG) in 1991, when he was finishing his playing career. He will be a trainer there for nearly 15 years, before donning the costume of sports director, until he climbs into Ligue 1. It was in September 2012, when the ETG floundered to 18th place, synonymous with relegation, that Dupraz himself replaces Pablo Correa on the bench. The Haut-Savoyard will leave Evian in 16th place, and above all will make him live an epic in the Coupe de France, eliminating PSG in the quarter-finals and cracking at the last minute in the final, against Bordeaux (2-3).
“Every week, he reinvented something, and it started again. "
Étienne Didot, Toulouse midfielder in 2016
Mission accomplished in Evian then.
In Toulouse too, as mentioned above.
“
Three days after my arrival, I had a faint.
I sagged in the middle of the players.
It certainly created a special bond between them and me,
”Dupraz told
Canal +
.
These players were Lafont, Didot, Braithwaite and even Ben Yedder.
In a warlike speech before the final trip to Angers, Dupraz brings tears to the eyes of some of his men: “
You deserve to keep yourselves.
It's been two and a half months since I told you that you are going to maintain yourselves.
[…] Now is the time to do it.
It's not tomorrow, it wasn't yesterday.
It is now.
"
To read also Pascal Dupraz in Figaro: "When you are inactive, you are useless"
Stories that start well ... and end badly
Étienne Didot will confirm these remarks a year later. "
He had promised us that from the start, when we had our heads in the bucket,"
he nodded for
Ouest-France
.
We took him for a fool. Each day that passed, he did not let go. It was only that that mattered to him. Every week, he reinvented something, and it started again.
»Then there was the move to Caen, 17th in Ligue 2 when Dupraz put his bags there, in October 2019. Stade Malherbe then raised its head by lining up 8 matches without defeat, and by winning 4 of the last 7 matches before the Covid-19 does not cause the cessation of the championship. Caen finished 13th. Dupraz therefore has everything a good firefighter on duty. But it also has its flaws.
To read also Pascal Dupraz in Figaro: "With the coronavirus, football is the least of my worries"
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If his beginnings are often successful, Dupraz has not shown the makings of a coach made to last. In Evian, he left the club on a relegation to Ligue 2, in 2015. In Toulouse, he was dismissed seven months after the maintenance, while the TFC is only 19th. His health problems had not helped. In Caen, he did not finish better either: dismissal in the middle of March 2021, after long weeks without a victory and a 14th place for the Normans who were aiming for the climb. The Dupraz method, "
cannot be done everywhere, all the time,
" said Didot for
Ouest-France
.
In Forez, where he succeeds Claude Puel with a contract until the end of the season, the now former TV consultant will discover an ASSE red lantern in the Ligue 1 standings. He will have to exploit the star striker with a strong temperament. , just like him, Wahbi Khazri.
Find the balance in the middle between the experienced Boudebouz and the young Gourna-Douath or Aouchiche.
And, above all, rebuild a defense, the second worst in Ligue 1 (39 goals conceded in 18 days), traumatized by the rout against Rennes on December 5 (0-5).
With Dupraz, the Greens know it, they are playing their game.