Jean-Louis Gasset during the Ligue 1 match between OM and RC Lens at the Stade-Vélodrome, in Marseille, April 28, 2024. DANIEL COLE / AP
We knew his adventure as coach of Olympique de Marseille (OM) was doomed to end at the end of the season. What Jean-Louis Gasset, 70, had not yet indicated is that this freelance work, which began last February within the Marseille club, would be the last of his career. Friday May 17, two days before the final match of the OM season in Le Havre (9 p.m.), the technician announced that he would not be looking for a new challenge at the end of his CONTRACT.
“Sunday is the last match of my career. That I stay in football, that my experience, my ideas and my networks are used is a possibility. I don’t know how to garden, I won’t have anything to do. But coach, it’s over. My decision is final”, indicated the coach at a press conference. Gasset indicated he wanted to succeed in his exit by obtaining a victory on the HAC pitch: “I will only be satisfied if we win on Sunday. »
OM enters this last day of Ligue 1 in 8th place, three points behind 6th, qualifying for the Europa Conference League, and 7th, which could also be depending on the result of the Coupe de France final. France between Paris Saint-Germain and Olympique Lyonnais, May 25. ” Everything is possible. It’s all about playing [notre] luck to the core. We have to win this last match, I want to win this last match”insisted Gasset.
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Called in February by the president of OM, Pablo Longoria, to redress the course of a club adrift, the 70-year-old coach only managed to put the Marseille club back on track during the first weeks of its mandate. Elimination in the semi-finals of the Europa League against Atalanta Bergamo and the prospect of a season which could end without qualification for the European Cup would tarnish the results of his last experience as coach.
A final season not easy
The latter is not responsible for the mistakes of the Marseille management and the laborious choices at the start of the season within a club which will therefore have had three coaches during the 2023-2024 financial year. But it is clear that Gasset will have had a final season full of twists and turns. At the beginning of January, he began the African Cup of Nations (CAN) at the head of the Ivory Coast team. “This is probably my last challenge”he predicted at the time.
A victory and two defeats – including a humiliating one against Equatorial Guinea (0-4) – later, he was fired from his post as coach of the Elephants. The latter, thanks to several combinations of circumstances, will finally win the CAN on February 11. A week and a half after this success which he observed in front of his television, Gasset joined OM.
Read also | Atalanta Bergamo-Olympique de Marseille: the summary of the elimination of OM in the semi-final of the Europa League
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Eighty-nine days later, the technician will say goodbye, on Sunday, to the position of coach, which he has held since 1991. Coach of Montpellier, then of Caen at the turn of the 2000s, he then held a long position the role of assistant, notably assisting Luis Fernandez at Paris Saint-Germain, before winning the title of French champion with the Girondins de Bordeaux, alongside Laurent Blanc, in 2008. With the “President”, he will discover the French team, still as assistant, between 2010 and 2012.
Becoming head coach again at Montpellier then at Saint-Etienne in 2017, Gasset then had a mixed experience of a season at Bordeaux between 2020 and 2021. Already, at the time, questions were emerging about the rest of his career. The Montpellier resident will have stretched this one out by a few years. “ It’s a pleasure for me to have coached OM. I spent times at the Vélodrome where I had goosebumps”concluded the technician, eager to leave OM by qualifying it for a European Cup.
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2024-05-17 15:04:25
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