There are enthusiasms that we struggle to grasp. Randomly, that of people who love autumn, who watch Hanouna or who share Elon Musk’s vision of the world. But what to say of this crazy craze for the position of captain of the French Davis Cup team, left free by Sébastien Grosjean, exfiltrated to try to make Arthur Fils a great champion in a duo with Bruguera?
No less than 14 candidates for a competition which everyone agrees is buried warm in a vault in Père Lachaise, since Piqué decided to shoot her before leaving like a thief. Moreover, the Blues remain with four pitiful eliminations in the first round amid general indifference. There was no one in the audience or in front of the TV to notice it.
A position of limited interest on paper
In terms of benefits? there is the pay, 200,000 euros per year for twelve weeks of hard work. It can be taken, obviously, but most of the contenders have enough bars in their A booklet for three generations. The prospect of marching with the Olympic delegation already makes more sense, but being made to believe that a Frenchman can touch a medal on clay next summer is like pleading for a ceasefire in the Middle East. : to tell you, the French number 1 is called Adrian Mannarino and he has won three matches at Roland since his first participation in 2008.
The success of the shallot race owes a lot to the very original procedure chosen solo by Gilles Moretton. An email sent to everyone in French tennis who is vaguely qualified for the position, a clever way of bringing everyone back into the presidential fold, while federal management appears to be damaged, to say the least, by a number of cases that would make one green with envy his predecessor Bernard Giudicelli?
Even Forget was surveyed…
Some candidates must have been as surprised as us to see themselves invited to a face-to-face interview with the boss by going to hotmail. Take Guy Forget, for example, long-term irremovable captain in the early 2000s, then director of Roland-Garros, before being kindly kicked out by the new governance because of his salary as a Qatari prince. The 91 Davis Cup winner didn’t say no, but it’s perhaps not the position that interests him. Henri Leconte? He himself admitted “that he was too far from the circuit” and that he could see himself “providing, helping, available, to be No. 2 or No. 3”, but no more. Without ruling out Julien Benneteau or Marion Bartoli, the favorite is undoubtedly to be found among the trio Simon-Tsonga-Paul-Henri Mathieu, and it is a duel at a distance which tells a lot about the internal balance of power within the FFT and its sometimes surprising functioning.
Thus, Nicolas Escudé, the official DTN, supposed to participate in the casting and himself propose the name of the lucky winner to the executive committee of November 17 by virtue of his prerogatives, is currently on sick leave for several weeks . The logical continuation of a creeping placarding of the “Scud”, now confined to building a high-level course for 5-15 year olds. The straw that broke an already well-filled vase according to our colleagues atTeam ? An email asking him to clear the CNE floor within 48 hours to set up his office elsewhere. A decision that leaves the field is open to the Ljubicic-PHM duo.
The Croatian was personally poached by Moretton to establish a high-level culture within the richest Federation in the world, a vast program in view of the cataclysmic results of French tennis despite a slight wind of optimism in recent months. Ljubicic is not often in Paris, but we saw him this week in Bercy and he regularly visits the French regional centers, discreetly providing his expertise. He is sometimes said to be surprised by the advice given to the country’s best prospects, like this time when he had to intervene with a player who was not hitting a forehand in training because of poor technique. The error had not been identified by the DTN representative present on site.
A partnership to build with Ljubicic
Federer’s ex-coach, who met with the entourage of the most promising players to assess their potential, is looking for allies within the Federation. In this perspective, the appointment as Davis Cup captain of high level director Paul-Henri Mathieu, who immediately positioned himself – “it’s the logical next step for me” he declares in theTeam– would appear to be a strong gesture: the two men like each other and work willingly together.
What can Gilles Simon and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga oppose him? The first, recently retired, is a brilliant man, with incomparable analytical accuracy, but his tormented relationship with the event as a player does not speak in his favor, as his spirit may be too independent in the current setting. . As for the second, he would certainly represent a nice media stunt in view of the Olympics, in addition to being the most likely to accompany his friend Monfils in a last dance full of emotion in Paris. But beyond his rather fresh relationship with Moretton, he embodies in his own way another failing of French tennis: the permanent conflict of interest.
Tsonga, founder of the All-in Academy with Thierry Ascione, is the majority shareholder of the Marseille, Lyon and Metz tournaments, he manages part of the hospitality at Roland-Garros and the Rolex Paris Masters through his agency Factory Sport and Management, and looks after the interests of Ugo Humbert. The same Humbert who openly positioned himself in favor of Tsonga without anyone asking him anything after his defeat against Zverev at Bercy. Embarrassing.
The elections in the background
If the former world number 5 promised to stop all activities likely to put him at odds in the event of appointment, the previous Sébastien Grosjean does not plead in his favor: the former captain, pinned by the ethics committee for “his various external activities”, had only owed his salvation to a stunt that should definitely not be reproduced at home. Ok to stay in position, but on condition of not selecting the players himself. A nice slice of fun, when you think about it. In short, if the wait will not prevent us from sleeping between now and November 17, we are quite impatient to observe the consequences of the presidential decision one year before the federal elections.
For the moment, no opponent seems to emerge to shake Gilles Moretton, outside the PNF, not quite out of the race despite the assurances of the president of the FFT before the commission of inquiry of the National Assembly. However, it is not impossible to think that the massive call for applications launched for the Davis Cup will disappoint a certain number of people who could rally around an indisputable figure in the months to come. The latter would go a long way, but weren’t we saying the same thing about the Moretton project in 2020?