Never two without three? After saving Evian-Thonon-Gaillard then Toulouse from relegation, coach Pascal Dupraz will try to do it again with Saint-Etienne, a Ligue 1 institution which faces a comeback, Auxerre, Thursday (7 p.m.) then Sunday. “Sainté” is ten French champion titles (the record equaled this season by PSG), six French Cups, an epic final of the Cup of champion clubs lost in 1976 but which is still talked about in the bars, a domination almost twenty years on French football (from the 1960s to the 1980s), a popularity that goes far beyond the borders of Forez and the luster of its recent performances.
It is this monument in danger, whose sale was mentioned in 2018 and 2021 without it materializing, that the leaders of Saint-Etienne asked Dupraz to save when they entrusted him with the keys to the changing room this winter. by Claude Puel. With perhaps in mind the legendary talk of this strong character with recognized qualities as a leader of men, pronounced in 2016, during a final trip from Toulouse to Angers in 2016. While the TFC had counted up to ten points behind the first non-relegation ten days before the end of the championship, he had won a final success in Anjou (3-2) to save himself on the wire. A feat never seen in France.
“I don’t know yet what I’m going to say to the players before the game. The chat, it does not work, “said Dupraz at a press conference on Tuesday. “There is also the whole context, the help that all the employees of the club give us. Every time they look at me, I feel like it’s a compassionate look and it gives me strength.” Last week, before the trip to Nantes, non-sporting employees, many of whom feared for their jobs in the event of relegation, came to support the players on the training ground.
Considered a service firefighter, Pascal Dupraz, whose future is not yet clear, sometimes suffers from being described as a “tactically limited trainer”, as he said during his first press conference in Saint-Etienne, December 15. “I’m lucky I’ve only coached clubs that were looking to hold on. It creates a certain force of habit, ”he also confided. “I will not run away from my responsibilities. I have the weakness to think that I have recipes for the team to get better.
In addition to Toulouse, Dupraz, soon to be in his sixties, had already contributed to the unexpected retention in the elite in 2014 of Evian-Thonon-Gaillard after having been one of the major players in the rise of this offshoot of several Haute-Savoie clubs. An assured maintenance, already, during the last day, with a victory at Sochaux (3-0). Even if the insurance is not all risks – the “Croix-de-Savoie” and Dupraz were taken down a year later – the man relies on a real force of persuasion that he tried to transmit to the entire Saint-Etienne club.
After having briefly dreamed of staying without going through the play-off box, then came close to an unceremonious direct relegation by chaining six matches without a win (current series), ASSE avoided the descent in extremis by the grace of a strike equalizer from Romain Hamouma in Nantes on Saturday (1-1).
We will have to do better against Auxerre, who remain on a series of two draws and six wins and a qualification for the penalty shoot-out against Sochaux. Because AJA, third in the Ligue 2 regular season, wants to believe in its destiny and in a return to Ligue 1, almost ten years after a painful relegation (2013) to close three decades of presence in the elite.
In terms of nostalgia football, the Yonne club, a former sponsorship team that has become the property of the Chinese group ORG Packaging, which came close to relegation to National in 2017, has arguments to make, with its title of champion of France 1996, its four French Cups and its big names, from Laurent Blanc to Eric Cantona via Stéphane Guivarc’h and Corentin Martins.
