Robert Herbin, legendary trainer of Saint-Etienne, is dead

May 13, 1976 on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. STF / AFP

This May 13, 1976, France celebrates its glorious losers. At the initiative of France Inter journalist Jacques Vendroux, a procession of green R5 (convertibles) descends the Champs-Elysées. With his red hair helmet, Robert Herbin is impossible to miss, even in the midst of a crowd of 100,000 people.

The coach of AS Saint-Etienne signs a few autographs, but the heart is not there. "I felt like I was somewhere else. At the Elysee, I don't even remember what the president told us. Who was it at the time? Giscard? ", he will tell many years later.

He had never seen this match the day before, this European Cup final of the champion clubs lost against Bayern Munich (0-1) in Glasgow. What's the point ? The posts in Hampden Park will always be square and realism will always be German.

Aged 81, Robert Herbin died on Monday April 27 in Saint-Etienne. He suffered from heart and lung problems and lived alone in his house in L’Etrat (Loire), where this Wagner lover listened to classical music with the sole company of his dog. Without news of him, his sister had alerted the gendarmerie which had discovered, on April 21, the one who was nicknamed "the Sphinx" dehydrated and unable to move.

Under his orders, the Greens have been " the strongest " in the 1970s. To the romanticism of defeat, Herbin would prefer that we retain the victories, his four championships won and his three French Cups in the eleven years spent on the Stéphane bench, between 1972 and 1983. If he trained by following the Red Star and Strasbourg, or even in Saudi Arabia and even the Lyon enemy, between 1983 and 1985, he remained the man of a club, of a city: Saint-Etienne.

Player four times champion of France

Saint-Etienne coach Robert Herbin (center) in 1976.
Saint-Etienne coach Robert Herbin (center) in 1976. STF / AFP

Herbin was however born on March 30, 1939, far from Forez and its mines. His family lives at 99, quai de la Loire, in 19e arrondissement, in Paris. He will see a sign there later. "Could I imagine that this quay would lead me eighteen years later in the Loire department to carry out most of my career there? ", he writes in his autobiography, They call me the Sphinx, published in 1983. A young midfielder with fantastic relaxation and a powerful strike, the Parisian joined AS Saint-Etienne in 1957 and participated in the club's first successes, with the four championship titles between 1967 and 1970.

It’s the era of Keita, Bereta, Bosquier, Carnus, Mekloufi

It’s the era of Keita, Bereta, Bosquier, Carnus, Mekloufi, and Robert Herbin, a good captain, thinks that we've never seen better at Geoffroy-Guichard. Repositioned in defense, he gained in authority what he lost in physical qualities since the vicious tackle of Nobby Stiles, this toothless Englishman, during the World Cup in 1966. With the Blues, Herbin (23 selections) is bad grave. The France team is never in the middle of the desert of results it crosses. There is a place to take in hearts and Saint-Etienne will seize it in the mid-1970s.

Ambitious president, Roger Rocher offers Herbin to replace his mentor, Albert Batteux, as coach in 1972. At 33, the young technician swears by local products. With the Janvions, Lopez, Bathenay, Santini, Rocheteau and the Revelli brothers already present, he has rather a happy hand. For the rest, he trusts the network of Pierre Garonnaire (who invented the job of recruiter) to find an Oswaldo Piazza, in Buenos Aires, and the goalkeeper, Ivan Curkovic, in Yugoslavia.

The "black box" affair and the fall of the Greens

Soon, his Greens are invited into living rooms and on color TVs in French homes. Split, Chorzow, Kiev or Eindhoven, the names of the beaten opponents still sound like Napoleonic battles. France loves this team, sometimes laborious, but capable of the wildest reversals. In Geoffroy-Guichard's cauldron, everything becomes possible; even catching up and erasing two goals behind Dynamo Kiev's Oleg Blokhine, even seeing a Rocheteau (injured in a thigh and unable to run) scored the goal of the qualification.

But this March 17, 1976, Herbin still offers this impassive face. As if fervor slipped over him. Secret, he counts his words with his players and even more in front of journalists. The man refutes the construction of a character. In his autobiography, he claims to have discovered the meaning of his nickname "By plunging on crosswords" in 1983. He ticks on the figurative sense of the sphinx given by his dictionary: "Enigmatic character frozen in a mysterious attitude. " According to him, it's bad knowing him: "I think that my concern to protect my players has often been confused with a certain attraction for mystery. "

In 1979, Rocher still dreamed of raising the "Cup with big ears" and took out his checkbook to recruit Michel Platini and the Dutchman Johnny Rep. A humorous recruitment, carried out in the back of Robert Herbin, not at ease with the stars. The beginning of the end. Despite other memorable European nights (like this 5-0 against Hamburg in 1980) and a championship title in 1981, the spell is broken. In March 1982, the "black box" scandal took everything in its path.

Moral authority, sometimes vacharde

Rocher first plays the offended. "AS Saint-Etienne has been my mistress for twenty-one years, does a man steal from his mistress's bag? " In reality, he subtracted from the tax services certain revenues (ticket office, refreshment bar) to ensure the lifestyle of the club and inflate certain salaries. Starting with that of his trainer. 1er June 1990, Herbin was sentenced to six months suspended prison sentence.

Seven years earlier, he had landed in a new direction behind which still hovered the shadow of Rocher and his eternal pipe. Robert Herbin is 43, but his best years as a coach have already turned his back on him. His return to the benches of the Greens, between 1987 and 1990, did not rekindle the flame of a club now trapped in its nostalgia.

Since then, Robert Herbin has hovered like a moral authority, sometimes vacharde, over the life of the Greens, whom he chronicled in Progress. His advice was as much awaited by supporters as it was feared by leaders, who sometimes threatened to close his access to the L’Etrat training center, very close to his home. Tired by his health problems in recent years, this eternal cigar smoker no longer came to walk his dog around the grounds. "The Sphinx" had returned to its riddles for good.

Robert Herbin in 5 dates

March 30, 1939 Birth in Paris

1967-1970 Four times champion of France with Saint-Etienne

1972-1983 Coach AS Saint-Etienne

1976 Loses the final to the "square posts" of the European Cup

April 27, 2020 Aged 81, Robert Herbin Died in Saint-Etienne

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