In six months, he will no longer be there.
Arriving this Tuesday at the beginning of the afternoon in the offices of the Étrat training center to sign his contract, Pascal Dupraz knew that he would initial, at his request, the shortest engagement of his career. : only six months.
According to a member of ASSE, the replacement of Claude Puel, who had for his part signed an agreement a few hours earlier to leave the Greens, wants to put himself in the same emergency posture as his new players.
And he especially does not want to link a possible extension to a maintenance of Saint-Étienne in Ligue 1. This is the method chosen by the Haut-Savoyard: board the Forézien ship which takes water without a lifeline.
Welcome 𝐜𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡 💪💚 pic.twitter.com/Y3mDbKZKG0
- AS Saint-Étienne (@ASSEofficiel) December 14, 2021
From this Wednesday, Dupraz will bring together his players and should use the same psychological strings that had worked so well in 2016 with Toulouse, saved at the last day.
But who had been less efficient with Caen in 2020, while the club had remained in the soft underbelly of the L2.
Dupraz, who believes in his humanist methods, will try to reassure a group in mental distress.
Consolidate defense
The only downside in his task, he will only be accompanied by a man of confidence, the physical trainer Baptiste Hamid.
He unsuccessfully claimed the arrival of his deputy in Caen, Stéphane Bernard, even proposing… to pay his salary.
In Forez, he will therefore rely on Julien Sablé, one of Claude Puel's assistants that President Roland Romeyer absolutely wanted to keep to support Dupraz.
But the new coach knows that it is not with chosen and warm words that the Greens will get out of the rut. Like Puel before him, he inevitably noted the marked weakness of the Forézienne defense. And it is not the announcement of the injury for nearly six weeks of promising goalkeeper Étienne Green that will reassure him. He should now play his network and try the loan of a central defender, in difficulty in an English club, to revive him. And the arrival of another elderly defender, why not the ex-Montpellier Hilton, 44 years old and yet retired for six months, is to be considered. He surely remembers that it was by enlisting the Brazilian Claudio Caçapa, aging in Lyon, that he brought Thonon-Gaillard up to L1 in 2011.
According to our information, it is the certainty that the maintenance was possible, displayed by Dupraz, during his interview, which tipped the scales on his side to the detriment of Frédéric Hantz.
It now remains to persuade its new players.