Since the descent of Sporting Club de Bastia in 2017, Corsican football had disappeared from Ligue 1. It finally found itself a beacon, with Athletic Club Ajaccien (ACA). The club, which has been playing in Ligue 2 since 2014, once again tasted the games of the national elite on Friday August 5 against Olympique Lyonnais (2-1 defeat). Sunday August 14, he will play his first match of the season, at home, against Lens.
This return to the fore was by no means obvious. Showing the twelfth budget in Ligue 2 last season (8.5 million euros), Ajaccio thwarted the forecasts by finishing runner-up to Toulouse. “I see this comeback as a reward for the seriousness of this club at all levels”, welcomes Didier Rey, historian and specialist in Corsican football, who adds that despite several back and forth between Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 since 1998 “the descents have never been disasters, because there has always been a policy of development”.
LACQUER “trains players and remains very careful in the choice of reinforcements. It’s a wise and building club.”, continues Didier Rey. And if the club “reap the fruits again today” of this policy, he owes it in large part to a man: Olivier Pantaloni, his trainer. At 55, the latter has known everything in Ajaccio: he was a player (between 1994 and 2000), physical trainer, assistant coach, then head coach.
“He is very very human”
The fifties with a shaved head has totaled more than four hundred matches on a professional bench since 2009 – the vast majority in Ajaccio. Because, if he went to train Tours, this infidelity was very brief (one season, in 2013-2014). It allowed him not to experience the pangs of a descent with the Ajaccien club, but, on the contrary, to be able to boast of having been at the helm of the last two comebacks in Ligue 1 (at the end of the 2011-2012 and 2021-2022).
If there are two words that characterize this former midfielder, son of teachers, it is “humility” and “humanity”.
This longevity and its results have been rewarded in particular by four nominations for “best coach” the UNFP trophies, which reward players in French professional football each year (2011, 2018 and 2022 in Ligue 2, 2012 in Ligue 1). However, do not expect Olivier Pantaloni to try to pull the cover to him. Because, if there is a word that characterizes this former midfielder, son of teachers, it is “humility”. We can add another: “humanity”.
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