To try to succeed in his final sprint to save his head in Ligue 1, the FC Nantes plays the new coach card. The club has indeed chosen to separate fromAntoine Kombouare and to bet on internal solutions, we learned Monday evening from sources close to the club.
Pierre Aristouy, coach of the U19s, will be in charge of leading the team for the last four games of the season, assisted by Oswaldo Vizcarrondo, current coach of the women’s team.
Three heavy defeats in one week
Called to the rescue in February 2021, Kombouaré had managed to snatch the maintenance that season and carried the team to the Coupe de France the following year, its first title in more than two decades. But despite an honorable run in the Europa League and a new Coupe de France 2023 final, he could not prevent the team from losing ground in the league.
Currently 17th and first relegated, two points behind Auxerre (16th) and three from Brest (15th) and Strasbourg (14th), Nantes has not won in the league since mid-February. And the team has just suffered three heavy setbacks in just one week: a humiliation against Toulouse at the Stade de France (5-1) and two 2-0 defeats against Brest and Strasbourg, direct competitors for maintenance.
A new coach trained in Nantes
President Waldemar Kita, a big consumer of coaches, has therefore chosen to separate from the Kanak coach in an attempt to create an electric shock. A former striker trained in Nantes, where he made his professional debut in 1999, Aristouy returned to the banks of the Loire in 2017 as a coach and had convincing results with the U19s. Vizcarrondo, a former Venezuelan international, also wore the Yellow and Green jersey (2013-2017). He returned in October to take charge of the women’s team, in difficulty in D2 after coming very close to the rise in D1 last year.