The French Connection : Toulouse

Goals, weight loss & quiz shows: The Andre-Pierre Gignac story

James Horncastle — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:30:00 GMT

The phone rang for the Nth time. Once again caller ID revealed it to be Marseille’s press officer. André-Pierre Gignac had purposely avoided picking up for weeks. But this time he couldn’t leave it hanging. He knew what was being recommended.

The club had made it clear through other channels. It was time to face up to the elephant in the room or more specifically the one stood right in front of the goal at the Vélodrome blowing raspberries in his direction.

Five months had now past since Gignac completed an eagerly anticipated transfer from Toulouse. The 25-year-old who had grown up in Martigues, a mini Provence version of Venice just half an hour outside Marseille, was finally coming home to play for the club he had supported as a boy. It was a dream for Gignac, one that he had been vocal about realising ever since his time with Lorient.

“It’s something fantastic, a great feeling of pride, an enormous emotion,” Gignac gushed to reporters at his official unveiling. “A lot of memories come to mind. I remember the matches that I went to see at the Vélodrome with my dad like against Lens in November 1998 when Christophe Dugarry scored. We won 1-0. I am a Marseille supporter. It’s going to be crazy.”

Just how crazy, though, was for the moment completely beyond Gignac. The local lad couldn’t possibly have imagined at the time that the next press conference he would be asked to give would be one apologising for the woeful start he has made to his career at Marseille. But that’s exactly what happened last week, as a sheepish-looking Gignac walked gingerly into the club’s media room wearing the expression of a penitent Christian on his way to confession.

As an opening gambit, he didn’t quite say: “Forgive me father for I have still not scored at the Vélodrome, it’s been three months since my last goal in Ligue 1.” The dominant theme, however, was one of mea culpa. Gignac had no option but to hold up his hands.

Much like tumbleweed blowing through a barren landscape, his solitary strike against Saint-Étienne was all Marseille had to show for the €16.5m they had paid for him in the summer. The time when he scored 30 seconds into his debut for Lorient and said, “I thought I was Ronaldo”, seemed very long ago indeed.

Statistics in L’Équipe showed that Gignac had just a two per cent conversion rate in front of goal. Even Youssouf Hadji –brother of former Coventry City cult hero Mustapha - had done better at mid-table Nancy while also somehow finding the time to run a hair salon. This obviously was neither a French striker of international class nor one who had topped the scoring charts in 2009, but rather a Mexican child swinging blindfolded at a piñata on his birthday. For try as he may, Gignac was hitting nothing but air.

And yet that’s not telling the whole story. After all, if it hadn’t been for a silly foul called on Brandao in the 93rd minute against Monaco in September, the header Gignac had nodded beyond Stéphane Ruffier would have counted as his first goal at the Vélodrome. Talk of a jinx would have ended there and then.

Instead the wait went on. He struck the post against Spartak Moscow, then the bar against Sochaux. A hat-trick away to Slovakian side Zilina in the Champions League was taken for granted, come as it did in a 7-0 win.

It was becoming a problem. The fans had started to whistle one of their own. Gignac was now a figure of fun, definitely more Ibrahim Bakayoko than Jean-Pierre Papin. Old history was dug up, such as how he famously got his break in professional football through his pushy grandmother who spent much of a family wedding badgering Jacques Abardonado, a cousin of the Gignacs and a defender with Valenciennes, for some precious advice. The young André-Pierre was simply told to drink more milk. Only he liked eating too. Evidently it wasn’t just the goals that made the player think he was Ronaldo.

In fact, the days when Gignac’s Toulouse teammates used to buy him slimming pills weren’t a thing of the past either. His paunch has come to the fore again since his move to Marseille. France’s version of Spitting Image, known as the Guignols, has recently run a feature that has caricatures of Didier Deschamps and Bernard Laporte guessing at his weight. The latter suggested he tips the scales to the tune of 29 stone, something Gignac himself finds funny.

“It made me laugh,” he said last week. “I love it. It’s off the wall humour, nothing malicious. But if I could lose one or two kilos it would be good. I am working towards it. I was a little less professional than I might have been before.”

Joking aside, things were beginning to get uncomfortable for Gignac, not least because Marseille were without a win in five matches in Ligue 1 and had been knocked out of the French Cup by second division leaders Evian.

Though panic had yet to set in largely on account of his side being fifth and just three points off the top, Deschamps couldn’t hide his concern with a lack of a cutting edge in attack for much longer.

“The statistics are bad even if they have not had dramatic consequences on our place in the table,” he explained. “To be champions you need to score 50 to 55 goals with the two strikers sharing 25 between them.” Marseille had a shortfall. Gignac and Loïc Remy, the strike duo who cost €30m in the summer, had contributed just six in Ligue 1, that’s €5m a goal to be exact.

To use DD’s own Cantona-esque phrase against him, it looked as though Marseille had in fact caught a couple of sardines when they had instead gone fishing for whales. The worst kept secret in the Vieux Port last summer was Deschamps’ desire to lure a big name striker with a proven track record in Europe to take Marseille to the next level, above all in the Champions League.

The names of Emmanuel Adebayor, Diego Forlan and Alberto Gilardino were all mentioned. Talks were in an advanced stage for Luis Fabiano too, but they collapsed. “We did everything to have him,” revealed Marseille president Jean-Claude Dassier. “But the price Sevilla demanded wasn’t reasonable. Everyone agreed on it even Didier who had the elegance to tell me so. I asked him: ‘Come to the office and give me your choice’. He arrived, sat down and said: ‘Gignac’. And that’s how it all started.”

Before Marseille did so, however, they faxed Chelsea to half-heartedly inquire about the prospect of bringing Didier Drogba back to the Vélodrome. Gignac, you see, was never first choice, if anything he was a consolation prize, and the poor lad knew it. “Between what I wanted or what I hoped for and the reality, I’ve had to adapt,” Deschamps said. “I will try to get the best out of it with my staff. It’s like that. At Marseille, like anywhere else, a coach is forced to adapt.”

Gignac tried to remain unfazed. “The sceptics should know that I have the mentality of a warrior and I am ready to die on the pitch,” he roared. And die Gignac did, but not in the way he intended. The shock departure of Marseille’s captain and last season’s top scorer Mamadou Niang after the season had already started threw Deschamps’ plans out of kilter. The weight of expectation on Gignac grew. He wilted under the floodlights.

Though Gignac’s shirt was still the third most popular in the club shop behind those of Mathieu Valbuena and Lucho Gonzalez, until he actually started scoring he could never feel loved. The adulation Drogba received on his emotional return to the Vélodrome with Chelsea in December offered a telling reminder of the bond he had yet to form with the fans.

So last week’s press conference was an operation in catharsis. Gignac got to tell his side of the story, revealing that it has taken time to adapt to life back in Provence. “Now that I am all in place, I want to be able to think about my job more,” he said. “I have everything that it takes to do well. I no longer have any excuses. I need to be 100 per cent to be good.

“Last season, I played injured because there was something extraordinary to play for [namely the World Cup] and you all know how that went. I had to put back my holidays and I wasn’t able to do pre-season training. Then I was injured. I had a great physical deficit that I tried to make up for each day. Playing every three days is a change for me. But there are no more excuses.”

No sooner had the press conference finished than Gignac looked like a relieved man. He accepted all the criticism and promised an imminent change in attitude. A great burden appeared to have been lifted off his shoulders. And the following Sunday, when Ligue 1 resumed after the winter break, Gignac started afresh.

Instead of using him at centre-forward against Bordeaux, Deschamps tried a little experiment. Gignac was surprisingly positioned out on the left with Brandao in the middle of Marseille’s frequently tweaked 4-3-3 formation.

Asked about the decision, Deschamps said: “I was champion of Europe with Rudi Völler on the left and Alan Boksic at centre-forward. I have seen Eto’o and Rooney play wide. Lisandro does it at Lyon and Mamad Niang did it here last season scoring goals.”

Gignac thrived in the greater freedom of his new role. He scored after 23 minutes, appearing at the far post to tap in a cross. The Vélodrome cherry had finally been popped and much like with Pringles, Gignac now couldn’t stop. Three days later, stationed out on the left again, he cut inside and scored an exquisite curling winner from outside of the box away to Auxerre, putting Marseille through to the League Cup Final.

If the streak continues, a re-call to the France squad in time for February’s friendly with Brazil might well be on the cards. Should that happen, the family will no doubt be celebrating again, just like they did when André-Pierre’s mother Corinne won €100,000 on the French version of Deal or No Deal. But maybe don’t bank on it just yet. He’s still in debt to the Marseille fans.

The FA Cup’s father was a hamster and its mother smelt of elderberries

James Horncastle — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 10:00:00 GMT

Guy Lacombe walked out of the dressing room, his moustache twitching with rage. The beleaguered Monaco coach had a bone to pick. Someone evidently was about to be on the end of a tongue-lashing.

He spied the journalists in the mixed zone and the match officials warming down in the tunnel. “It’s all your fault,” Lacombe raged, pointing his finger at both of them. The 55-year-old knew his time was up. He was a dead man walking. The guillotine lay in wait. This was one defeat too many, a humiliation.

Just a few minutes earlier the Monaco players had walked off the pitch in Chambéry, their faces utterly disconsolate. This town was supposed to be famous for skiing not football. And yet its amateur team, a member of French football’s fifth tier, had remarkably forced extra-time then penalties and won 3-2 (the decisive spot-kick and ensuing scenes of surprisingly reserved celebration can be seen in the brilliantly shot video below...). While the Chambéry players celebrated reaching the last 32 of the French Cup for only the third time in their history, Lacombe caught a whiff of conspiracy.

Paranoia had set in. He sensationally claimed to have been the latest victim of a “populist drift” within the media and the game itself to see the little teams go through. After all, last weekend’s round of games in the cup wasn’t so much an occasion for giant killing as mass extermination.

A record 10 teams from Ligue 1 were eliminated at the first time of asking. No fewer than eight fell at the hands of lower league opposition and two more needed spot kicks to see them through. Imagine Motty’s little face had that happened in England. In terms of magic, the Coupe de France was playing David Copperfield to the FA Cup’s Paul Daniels.

With the world turned on its head and Lacombe now sacked, Frédéric Antonetti was hailed as an unlikely saviour after leading first division Rennes to a 7-0 win at home to third division Cannes. That’s more like it, wrote L’Équipe, who even went so far as to call his side “the heroes of Ligue 1.” Things were clearly getting quite desperate.

Asked to explain the woes of his fellow top-flight managers, Antonetti sighed: “You can see that the Coupe de France matches are very complicated when teams are coming back from a 10-day break and a week of training. It’s rough. The coaches are cannon fodder in this competition and I find it deplorable. It’s a shame to play the Cup in the first week of January. I defend my profession and I am perhaps the only one.”

So a lack of preparation was to blame, then? Well not if you take the case of Paris FC coach Jean-Luc Vannuchi, who started the domino effect a week ago today. Seemingly under no illusion as to the task awaiting his third division side who had been drawn against last year’s semi-finalists Toulouse, the bright young tactician gave each of his players a rather odd Christmas present before the winter break.

It was a USB stick on which there was a specific training regime to follow over the next week or so as well as footage of Toulouse’s last two matches in Ligue 1 against Caen and Valenciennes. The tactics were laid out in advance too. “The idea was that of leaving the ball to Toulouse,” Vanucchi explained. “Because they are less at ease when they have to take the initiative.” Paris FC were so well-equipped for the task at hand, it mattered little that a thief nicked off with one of their kit bags at Toulouse-Bagnac airport.

Vannuchi’s acute eye for detail paid dividends. Youssouf Touré’s opener looked a little untidy, come as it did via a long ball, but Paris FC’s second had its origin on the training ground with Stephen Vincent doubling his side’s advantage through a well worked set piece that caught Toulouse cold.

The match ended 2-1 and incredibly it was déjà vu for the home side who had lost to the same opponent by the very same scoreline three years ago. For Toulouse, the magic of the cup appeared to turn match day into Groundhog Day.

Of course, preparation alone isn’t always enough. Motivation can often prove the difference in knock-out ties and Wasquehal certainly weren’t lacking in that department. Like Chambéry, here was a team from France’s fifth tier. Before Saturday’s game against Champions League qualifiers Auxerre, the club’s president Gérard Vignoble, who also happens to be Wasquehal’s mayor, started an ugly war of words with Lille over the proposed use of their ground for the cup-tie.

Mindful of the fact that their own home has neither floodlights, or stands, Wasquehal felt Lille would graciously lend the club a stage on which to host a cup upset. They had after-all shared the stadium in Villeneuve d’Ascq, if only briefly in 2004. Lille, the Ligue 1 leaders, consented but begrudgingly and questioned whether Wasquehal would bring enough supporters to make it worthwhile. Needless to say, it didn’t go down well with Vignoble.

“We have always lived in Lille’s shadow and Lille don’t respect us,” he scoffed. “They are profoundly incapable of interesting themselves in lower league football.”

Vignoble pettily brought up old history too, recalling how Lens rather than Lille had come to Wasquehal’s rescue when the club nearly folded in 1999. The reply he got from Lille president Michel Seydoux was entertaining if predictable. He was told in no uncertain terms that if there really is such a great relationship with Lens president Gervais Martel, then why not play at his house.

Wasquehal had done a lot of talking. It was now time for action. The odds were stacked against them, something Rémi N’Dong, the team’s defender, knew only too well having recently completed a master’s degree in finance. Ironically, however, for a team that included a pair of bankers, Wasquehal’s 2-1 win resembled a stick-up.

L’Équipe even likened it to one of France’s most famous heists, namely that of Albert Spaggiari whose robbery of the Nice branch of Société Générale in 1976 was known as the steal of the century. Auxerre had gone 1-0 up early doors only for Grégoire Debuchy to equalise after 81 minutes and David Coulibaly to seal a famous victory with an injury time penalty. It was pure smash and grab.

As fate would have it the draw for the next round pits Wasquehal against Lille. Smiling like a Cheshire cat, Vignoble now has his revenge while Debuchy will get to face his brother Mathieu.

And if that wasn’t enough for one crazy weekend, what with Montpellier, Saint-Étienne, Arles, and Valenciennes all having their pants pulled down and no doubt being taunted in Monty Python fashion, Sunday night delivered another surprise, not least because the headlines wrote themselves. Evian, no less, beat a watered down Marseille side on a waterlogged pitch to record a deserved 3-1 victory.

Looking pretty in pink, the Ligue 2 leaders’ found a hero in Kevin Bérigaud, the provider of an assist and a goal, who had once nearly been kicked out of the club after he received an eight-month ban for punching a Chambéry player in the final of the Rhônes-Alpes Cup three years ago. “I am happy for Kev,” said the club’s president Patrick Trotignon. “He must be happy. Happier than the others.”

As for Marseille, it has now been a month and a half since Didier Deschamps’ side last won a game against French opposition of any kind.

But let’s forget that for a minute, as the weekend undoubtedly belonged to the Coupe de France. One could quite easily be mistaken for thinking that the FA Cup has the exclusive rights to something as ubiquitous as magic. After all, this season’s promotional video entitled Pride, Passion, History, Giant Killing tells us repeatedly and quite convincingly too that the supernatural happens every year, even amid growing scepticism about its relevance.

Still, the likes of Stevenage, Notts County, Torquay United and Burton Albion all honoured its name at the weekend. They doffed their respective caps to the legends of Ronnie Radford, Bob Stokoe, Sutton United and of course the Crazy Gang. But the idea that the magic circle is closed to anyone from outside these hallowed borders is less to do with truth and more with illusion.

A worthy response would be a Gallic shrug and, believe you me, the French Connection is doing just that right now while also muttering under its breath that the FA Cup’s father was a hamster and its mother smelt of elderberries. Pah!

Toulouse’s Casanova not wooing critics

James Horncastle — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:50:00 GMT

Oddly enough for a man with a name as innately attractive as Alain Casanova, the Toulouse manager is having a hard time making people fall in love with his purple-shirted team even though they currently sit top of Ligue 1 with a 100 per cent record after the season’s opening three games.

“It’s not the moment to get carried away. There is still a lot of work to do,” he said, pouring cold water on a hard-fought 2-1 victory over Arles-Avignon, which was played out in scorching temperatures on Saturday afternoon.

Admittedly, Toulouse’s impressive run in Le Championnat has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Two of their three wins this season have come against newly promoted opposition, and sandwiched between that pair was a not to be snubbed at 2-1 success away to Bordeaux last weekend, although the 2009 champions haven’t been the same team since those bungling idiots at the French Football Federation first reached out in earnest to Laurent Blanc.

Even so, the circumstances surrounding Toulouse’s early rise to the summit of the French game make for quite a fascinating story, for this is a team that hasn’t been top since September 11, 2004 and was in France’s Third Division only eight years ago. Le Téfécé are Ligue 1’s Yo-Yo club extraordinaire, consistent only in their own inconsistency.

After tying a 20-year-old club record with a third place finish in 2007, Toulouse frustratingly dropped to 17th the following season. And far from being an anomaly that undulating rollercoaster of a trend continued apace in 2009, when Casanova led his side to fourth spot, only for them to plummet to 14th a year later.

Second season syndrome is evidently what passes for Groundhog Day in the Haute-Garonne.
“We have considerable potential in this squad,” said Mauro Cetto, the club’s 28-year-old Argentine captain. “We could really claim to be a lot better without this chronic inconsistency. We need to be a force again and one with the spirit of revenge.”

This season will undoubtedly be a measure of that squad’s promise given it hasn’t really changed at all in the last year. But in many ways Toulouse are an example to follow, especially in terms of youth development.

No fewer than 12 players in the current first team squad have come through the club’s fertile academy, making up 43 per cent of the whole, the most notable graduates being Moussa Sissoko, Étienne Capoue and Cheikh M’Bengué.

An emphasis on youth has also been borne out on the transfer market. Adrian Gunino, an exciting 21-year-old right-back, has arrived on loan from Danubio Montevideo following an impressive showing for Uruguay at the Under-20 World Cup in Egypt last year. And he is joined by an enigmatic young midfielder called Wissam Ben Yedder, who represented France at Futsal while playing for amateur side Alfortville only last year.

“Of course we would have liked to have had a little more support in some positions, but it’s also a choice,” Casanova explained in July. “We neither have the desire nor the need to completely transform ourselves. What we want is to keep the spine of the team that has been here for two years.”

Unfortunately for Casanova, he won’t get that chance at least as far as André-Pierre Gignac is concerned. Toulouse’s star striker left for Marseille last week, realising a boyhood dream in the process. “I have always wanted to play for OM,” he told L’Équipe on Saturday. “I thought back to the matches that I have gone to see at the Vélodrome. A match against Lens. Dugarry scored. We won 1-0. I am a Marseille supporter.”

After last month likening Gignac to a pot of yoghurt to illustrate the fact the 24-year-old didn’t have “a sell-by date”, Toulouse president Olivier Sadran now just has nine days to find a replacement. Xavier Pentecôte was supposed to fill that role after returning on loan from Bastia where he scored 12 goals in 15 games last season only to suffer a knee injury that will keep him out of action for six months.

Former Sunderland and Manchester United reject David Bellion may yet arrive on loan from Bordeaux, but the favourite remains Nolan Roux, the inspiration behind Brest’s promotion-winning campaign. For now, though, Toulouse seem to be coping just fine without Gignac, partly because they had to get used it last season on account of his chronic groin problems.

Daniel Braaten, ‘the Norwegian Koala’ who Bolton fans may remember from a woeful spell at the Reebok two years ago, has been moved from a position out wide to centre-forward with unexpected success. He has scored three goals in three games since the start of the season and five in his last seven appearances. The Braatman is now just seven goals shy of becoming the all-time top scoring Norwegian in Ligue 1 history, which is some accolade considering the competition from John Carew and Thorstein Helstad. Wink wink.

How long Toulouse can maintain their streak remains to be seen. Their form is no sudden blip, as they were unbeaten in eight pre-season friendlies, even defeating champions Marseille 4-2. But Braaten, for instance, surely can’t be expected to be anything more than a stop-gap, not with Coca-Cola kid Colin Kazim-Richards gone, and Soren Larsen - the Danish Peter Crouch - as his only back up. Braaten’s highest season tally even in Norway was just nine, so it’s debatable whether Toulouse will score enough goals to stay in the top four.

September will go some way to answering those questions, as Saint-Étienne, Monaco and Lille all appear on the horizon. Toulouse have been well organised and miserly under Casanova, his back four being one of the top two in Ligue 1 in each of his two years at the helm.

Le Téfécé’s penchant for the smash and grab, as illustrated in Braaten’s three goals coming from just four shots on target, has unfortunately resulted in the word “vulgar” being used to describe their brand of football, even if objectively it’s just efficient. After all, the modern game is results-oriented, and the realist in Casanova knows that seduction must always come second to silverware.

Whatever the reception his team gets up and down L’Hexagone, the 49-year-old feels no urgent need to go on a charm offensive. Given France’s ‘Big Three’ all recorded their first wins of the campaign this weekend, Toulouse are just happy to have a cushion on which they can now rest, although Casanova, ever the smooth-talker that he is, would prefer to call it “a little mattress” and quite right too, the saucy devil.

Goal of the Week – Gaël Danic vs Auxerre

Valenciennes got used to seeing their side play some effervescent football last season, but Philippe Montanier has adopted a more restrained style this term. Somehow though, even he couldn’t hold back his captain, Gaël Danic, who fizzed a dipping fastball wickedly across Auxerre’s despairing goalkeeper Olivier Sorin from a distance closer to the half way line than the penalty area.

Latest transfer talk – Yoann Gourcuff to Lyon

L’Équipe claims Yoann Gourcuff held a meeting with Bordeaux president Jean-Louis Triaud on Saturday afternoon accompanied by his lawyer Didier Poulmaire to declare his intention to join Lyon before the end of the transfer window. Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas said only last week that Gourcuff would be the “ideal player” for his side who look especially light in midfield, but not at the cost of €26m.

That was the minimum fee release clause stipulated in Gourcuff’s contract, but Bordeaux’s majority shareholder Nicolas de Tavernost claims it expired on July 31, making it even more difficult for Lyon to sign him. When asked on Canal + if Sunday’s game against Paris Saint-Germain would be his last in a Bordeaux shirt, Gourcuff, who was sitting on the bench, simply said: “We’ll see.”

The key issue – Loïc Rémy’s heart defect

Thursday was scripted to be the greatest day of Loïc Rémy’s fledgling career. Instead, it turned out to be arguably the darkest. The 23-year-old Nice striker, who had been linked with several Premier League clubs this summer, had agreed to move to French champions Marseille in a €15.5m transfer and was due to be formally unveiled to the media.

After that event was cancelled not once, but twice, it was revealed that a medical had brought to light a hitherto undiagnosed heart defect. “I am a bit annoyed but it is my health after all and obviously we must look into it,” Rémy said on Friday. “The real shame is that these tests did not take place before. It was necessary for me to come to a club like Marseille to have tests which are more in depth.”

More tests will be carried out on Monday, but given the League has made routine cardiograms a requirement since 2004, it begs the question, especially in light of the deaths of Marc-Vivien Foé, Dani Jarque and Antonio Puerta, why Nice were apparently unaware of his condition and whether their medicals are sufficient? Hopefully, further cardiograms will show Rémy’s condition to be treatable or manageable and Kanu’s long career should serve as an inspiration.

RESULTS Sat Aug 21 Toulouse 2-1 Arles-Avignon, Rennes 0-0 Saint-Etienne, Nice 1-1 Nancy, Lens 2-2 Monaco, Marseille 2-0 Lorient, Lyon 1-0 Brest, Auxerre 1-1 Valenciennes Sun Aug 22 Montpellier 0-0 Caen, Sochaux 0-0 Lille, PSG 1-2 Bordeaux

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