Before facing Paris Saint-Germain in the 32nd final of the Coupe de France, how did you feel about the players this week?
Nicolas Giné: I have the impression a little that it was false relaxation. The talk that everyone has is: “Let’s be relaxed, have fun”, but we feel that the boys have their heads a little in the clouds, it’s a little complicated to concentrate them on the training sessions. training. So it was a little more difficult week than we thought. I’m not too surprised, but it’s true that it was a little more complicated than usual.
It’s not the motivation that’s lacking, after all?
NG: Oh no, motivation-wise, no worries. We are 200%, we are keen to have a great match on Sunday evening.
How do you explain this tension, then?
NG: It’s not exactly tension. Perhaps rather a lack of knowledge of the environment. The boys are in great demand from the media, we had another press point on Thursday, all that takes energy. We trained in front of 300-400 people with the media, TVs everywhere around… So it’s at the level of concentration that there is change, that we notice differences. There are a lot of things to store for amateur footballers, they are not used to it.
As a coach, how did you want to organize the week?
NG: So far (the interview was carried out on Friday, editor’s note), we haven’t changed anything. Normal week. But there will still be a big change, and I hope that this is where the players will become aware of the match: on Saturday, we will meet up among ourselves, to do active recovery in the gym. Then, we go green on Revel, before leaving for the stadium on Sunday afternoon. It is in these moments that we will have collective and individual discussions with the players, and we will try to find the right words to put them in the best possible mood.
Nothing worse than coming out of such a match and regretting
And what are the good words before facing PSG in the Coupe de France?
NG: To tell them that they remain as they usually are, that is to say R1 players who do interesting things. And then, tell them to play the match hard. Don’t tell yourself that it’s lost in advance, especially not, so as not to regret anything in the end. Because I believe there is nothing worse than coming out of a match like that and regretting it in the end.
Last year, PSG faced the Pays de Cassel in the round of 16, resident of R1 like Revel, and scored 7 times (7-0, final score). We imagine that you are a little afraid of taking a lot?
NG: 7, with a quintuplet from Mbappé… (laughs) As a competitor, coach and manager of this team, I don’t want to take a long time at all, and in front of so many people (the match will be played at the Pierre- Fabre de Castres in front of 10,000 people, editor’s note). Logic dictates that this happens. But if it has to happen, it has to happen in the best way possible, without giving up. Afterwards, of course, even if we tell ourselves beforehand that we shouldn’t do it, it becomes more difficult to make the effort once there are 3-0, 4-0, and to stay in place tactically.
What would a successful match be for you?
NG: It will be a successful match if we are able to have phases of play with possession, even if only 30 seconds here, 45 seconds there. If we succeed in creating gaps, if tactically, we manage to present something that we have worked on in training, then it will be a successful match.
How do you hope to thwart PSG’s plans?
NG: Above all, we want to stay focused on what we know how to do, where we perform well, even if it’s in Regional 1… We have players who are technically quite interesting, we like to have possession. We are also good on counterattacks, and on set pieces.
What do your players do in life?
NG: We have no players under contract on the team. We have a boilermaker who plays up front, we have two car salesmen, a computer scientist. I still have 4 boys who are in college, I have one in BPjeps.
They made the rounds on social networks, with this video where we see them celebrating the draw…
NG: It all started from there, it was completely crazy. What you need to know is that we have a person in charge of communication and correspondence for the US Revel site, and its social networks. She took this video, but more to share it later on our networks, so that it stays a little between us. We realized after two hours that there were more than 160,000 views, but we didn’t realize it, we were laughing about it. And the next morning, the phones started ringing. We were attacked, whether at the town hall, the secretariat… I don’t even know if Ligue 1 clubs receive that many calls, in fact (laughs). It was impressive.
In the event that PSG eliminates you, have you thought about the fact that the end of the season in the championship could be a little difficult to understand, after a euphoric break like this?
NG: Yes, and we have already spoken to the players about it. With the staff, we have already thought about how we should approach this fall. We know that there are plenty of clubs who have had a very difficult time in the weeks and months after a great adventure in the Cup. Every year, we see some who go to the round of 32, to the round of 16, and when we are a little curious, we sometimes realize that this team that we saw, at the end of the season, went down. We were good before: the idea is to stay in this spiral to be good afterwards. We can have a bit of slack, but we should avoid the fall being too brutal.