Jules Verne anticipated the space capsule, the hologram and even the videoconference. But the novelist from Nantes left the time machine to Herbert George Wells. If this technology existed today, it would be the only solution for enjoying the “Nantes style game”. At least, that’s the – very divided – opinion of Maxime Bossis. “We would like the opposite, but we will never see the Saint-Etienne of the 1970s, nor the FC Nantes of the 1980s or the 1994-1995 season. We call it the pastsays the former defender, triple champion of France with the Canaries.
Despite this observation, the “Grand Max” has planned to encourage his distant successors in the final of the Coupe de France against Nice, Saturday May 7 in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis). The opportunity to put the past aside for a bit. Since the title of champion of France in 2001 (the eighth of the club), the Nantes supporters have swallowed black bread in industrial quantities between relegations in Ligue 2, permanent conflict with the president Waldemar Kita (owner of the club since 2007) and worse still : the loss of an identity.
Much has been said, written and fantasized about this Nantes-style game. Some even believe to see there the matrix of the great FC Barcelona of Pep Guardiola, at the end of the 2000s. His first dad comes from elsewhere on the other side of the Pyrenees. A Spanish refugee after the civil war, José Arribas laid the foundations in the early 1960s. This almost unknown coach placed his adopted city on the map of French football. The Nantes game does not yet exist – the qualifier will come from the pen of the correspondent of The Team Patrick Dessault in 1992 – but his spirit is already in the making.
As much as a style, this football based on speed, technique and intelligence is also akin to ethics. The “game” before the “I”, the gray matter rather than the muscles, victory as a consequence of the work and not as an objective. A phrase hammered out by Raynald Denoueix to his players. After Arribas the pioneer, Vincent the eternally forgotten and Suaudeau the lunar genius, Denoueix was the last of the great thinkers of Nantes-style football with his sensitivities and nuances.
“The dismissal of Denoueix is the beginning of the end”
“Coco” Suaudeau sometimes made fun of the taste “little passes” of his successor more focused on possession of the ball. He preferred the lightning attack and the exploitation of the imbalance. This style is close to perfection (one defeat in 38 games) with his French champion team in 1995, that of Loko, Ouédec, Pedros and Karembeu, all children of Jonelière, training center and soul of the club.
You have 63.76% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.
