Nine matches, seven victories and a leading position with five points ahead of second Troyes, Paris FC’s course has so far been almost perfect. But René Girard wants to take advantage of the trip to Dunkirk on Saturday (7 p.m.) to keep his group on the alert.
“How was your week after the victory against Caen?”
I’m not telling you anything, victory contributes to a climate of serenity. We recover better, we train better. We haven’t changed anything with logical work, but we take care not to get lost, to stay focused. The match against Caen is behind us and we quickly look forward to the next one. Dunkirk, it won’t be a piece of cake.
How do you manage to maintain an attentive group when you have just put together four straight victories?
Things have been in place since the start of the season, but we are trying not to fall into the mess. We adapt our speech with my staff. With our status as a leader, we know that the motivation of our opponents is very evident. This reinforces my idea that we must above all pay attention to ourselves and not too much to others. With humility and without being inflamed. What is recurrent is that I often repeat that we haven’t won anything yet.
“We suffered the absences but it validated our desire to work with a homogeneous group. It certainly contributed to the unity ”
Are you even more careful before matches like against Dunkirk, supposedly less armed?
In a Championship, there is always something new to settle from one match to another. There, we will face a type of teams that are always difficult to handle at home. We expect a fight. The difficulty is to think that it will be easier. On the contrary, we insist even more on rigor. It will be vital to be in place, present in the duels. We must see the danger coming the better to avoid it. These are the matches where you have to be even more vigilant.
With the injured, the suspensions and the Covid, you must have already been running. In the end, does this also contribute to your good start to the season?
We had never been able to field the same team twice or even start a match with what we thought was the typical team. We suffered the absences but it validated our desire to work with a homogeneous group. It certainly contributed to the unity. We are on a razor’s edge with the management of a group of 18-20 players. It is not easy to mobilize everyone in the same dynamic. This is why we feel that the possibility of making 5 replacements is very positive. It’s a big breath of fresh air for us, the staff, but we can feel it in the players too. This gives more visibility to those who play less. But they remain focused, concerned. The entrants very often made a copy interesting ”.
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