Christian Gourcuff, who recently retired, looks back on his career in a book entitled Christian Gourcuff, my quest for the ideal game. The former coach of Algeria remembers for RFI his work with the Fennecs, from August 2014 to April 2016.
Appointed in July 2014 as the new coach of Algeria, Christian Gourcuff had succeeded Vahid Halilhodžić, just after the World Cup in Brazil where the Fennecs had experienced a historic round of 16 against the Germans, future world champions. The former coach of Lorient stayed two years and lived the CAN 2015 in Equatorial Guinea where the Greens, designated as favorites, left the competition at the quarter-final stage after a defeat against Côte d’Ivoire. ” I have good memories of Algeria. I had a good relationship with the players. We had the same sensitivity to football and this team was very interesting.says Christian Gourcuff straight away.
” I really appreciated Yacine Brahimi”
At the time, the team was made up of Riyad Mahrez, Faouzi Ghoulam, Islam Slimani, Sofiane Feghouli, Yacine Brahimi and Mehdi Lacen, among others. Christian Gourcuff was impressed by the latter two. ” I really liked Yacine Brahimi. He was technically exceptional. He didn’t have the career he should have had. I also discovered Mehdi Lacen. He was at the end of his career and I regret not having known him before. He had incredible intelligence “, he said, also speaking of a very fresh team, which he had a lot of fun finding.
But not everything was easy for the French technician. ” There were plenty of things that distorted the pleasure I hadhe laments. It affected our day-to-day work and every time I didn’t like the context, I left. And sometimes to the detriment of my interests. It wasn’t easy, there were political issues that polluted a lot of things. It tired me, I had to stop “. In Algeria, football is still an epidermal subject, the pressure is enormous on the shoulders of the coach.
And to add: When I signed in Algeria, apart from the post of coach, I had to help the DTN [directeur technique national, ndlr] to put in place a technical policy, and I was interested in doing it for a country. It was something I really wanted to do. But I ran into political problems. It was hard. »
An evolved collective game
Follower of 4-4-2, Christian Gourcuff had to compose and often came up against reality. ” The conditions were complicated. We bet on an evolved collective game and we found ourselves in trouble, because sometimes the grounds did not allow it to be done, he explains. We also sometimes found ourselves facing players who had great athletic qualities. The climatic conditions also counted a lot, and posed problems for developing this collective game. When international matches took place in Blida, there were often river scores, because we had a decent pitch. »
Except that when traveling outside during the CAN playoffs, there were bound to be surprises. “ We ended up playing on a stabilized lawn in Lesotho or Malawi. I remember a game in Tanzania where you couldn’t even make three passes. Needed a special adaptation. “says Christian Gourcuff.
Algeria remains the only experience that the former coach of Nantes has had as a coach. According to him, it is still a very different job from club work, which requires a different approach. ” In a championship, a coach federates above all through his work. To lead a national team, he must also federate by his personality to be very quickly in osmosis with the players », concludes Christian Gourcuff.