Jean-Marc Furlan, the leader of AJ Auxerre men
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“If you want, we can continue the interview, but first, I’ll start the aerobics session… Ah, but no, they’re still there, those little bastards! » In a joking tone, the coach of AJ Auxerre (AJA), Jean-Marc Furlan, talks about his players who attend a video montage of their future opponent in Ligue 1, Montpellier, in a hall of the stadium of l’Abbé-Deschamps, Tuesday 16 August.
The scene says a lot about the character Furlan: enthusiastic, spontaneous and willingly rude in front of the cameras, light years away from the hyperframed communication of the coach of the Blues, Didier Deschamps.
It also says a lot about its complicity with its workforce, promoted this summer in Ligue 1. “Sometimes, when they annoy me, I say bad words to themcontinues the 64-year-old coach. Mathias Othert [milieu offensif] said, “Coach, we know you insult us all day, but we don’t care, because you love us!” »
Taking the elevator, a habit
Be careful not to be mistaken: when he feels the need to make a point, Jean-Marc Furlan is careful not to point out individuals in front of the group. “If you age while continuing with a management of the XXe century, the guys let you go. To say things, I do it between four eyes. And there, the player accepts, because there is no one around. »
It is no coincidence that five members of the current squad (Mathias Autret, Quentin Bernard, Donovan Léon, Gaëtan Charbonnier and Alexandre Coeff) followed the coach from Brest to Auxerre. In 2018-2019, Jean-Marc Furlan had already moved up to Ligue 1 with the Breton club. Annoyed at not feeling ” trust “ management in his ability to keep the club in Ligue 1, he had slammed the door in stride.
The Italian-born Girondin bounced back in Burgundy, where he once again lifted the club into the top flight. Taking the elevator has become a habit: with five climbs, the first three having been obtained at Troyes (2005, 2012 and 2015), he holds the record for promotions in Ligue 1 since the introduction of the single Ligue 2 pool in 1993-1994.
Label
Only, the one who wears both the suit and the cap upside down, in front of the bench, also has several relegations on his CV. This season, he hopes to get rid of this label of good coach for Ligue 2, but not for Ligue 1. The task promises to be difficult: AJA has one of the smallest budgets in the championship (32, 5 million euros) and, at the end of this season, there will not be two – plus a play-off – but four teams in the elevator to the lower floor; a consequence of the transition from a championship of twenty to eighteen clubs.
In addition, the coach must recompose his team with players recruited from all lines (goalkeeper, defence, midfield, attack) during the summer transfer period. “The first thing in football is: ‘How do you create collective cohesion?’ That’s what allowed us to go for the promotion to Ligue 1 because the guys had been playing together for two years. There, we are only at the letter A or B of the alphabet »image the Auxerrois professor, evoking the beginnings.
During the first home game of the season, Sunday August 14, the loudest name chanted by the public at the Abbé-Deschamps stadium was not ” Eh “ (Gauthier) or “Charcoal” (Gaëtan) – two players who appeared in the standard team for the 2021-2022 Ligue 2 season – it was “Furlan”.
Even the eternal Guy Roux fell in love. “Jean-Marc started three years ago. I was a little perplexed, you have to have the marrow that he has to start making a building and not deviate from it. (…) I think it would be foolish not to keep it”, declared, at the end of May, the former coach of AJA between 1961 and 2005, in Republican Yonne.
“I was a contract killer”
The contract of the current AJA coach runs until May 2023. Suffice to say that if the ship pitches this winter, the captain risks going overboard again. Mr. Furlan knows it and assures him: it is not the 4-1 defeat in Lille on the first day of the 2022-2023 financial year, on August 7, which will make him turn his jacket – or his cap – on his principles of play.
Ironically, the coach who wants “transmit emotions to people”, producing a football “bold”had been formed in the 1970s at ” destroy “ opponent as central defender. “Each time, I was shown the photo of the opposing centre-forward: ‘He mustn’t finish the match!’ I was a contract killer…I’m a little ashamed of it now…”
When asked about his popularity in Auxerre, where the fans were banging on his car at the end of the match against Angers, the coach replied that it was the same at Stade Brestois. He has an anecdote in stock to prove it. It dates from 2021 and the Guingamp-Auxerre match, at the Roudourou stadium, at the Costa Rican rival of the Finistère club.
“Behind the bench, there were a dozen ultras from Brest in their twenties. During the whole match, they yelled “Furlan president!”. At the end of the match, they wanted to steal everything from me: the cap, the jacket…”, he says, a smile on his face. We can already imagine the scene repeating itself in a few years with supporters from Auxerre.
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