Christian Gourcuff

Christian Gourcuff (2016)

Christian Gourcuff (born April 5, 1955 in Hanvec , Finistère ) is a former French football player and current coach .

player

The midfielder , who was born and raised in Brittany , never played as a professional for a Division 1 club , but for several years he was part of the respective second division team at Stade Rennais , EA Guingamp , FC Rouen , FC Lorient and Le Mans UC . He also won the Coupe Gambardella in 1973 as a 17-year-old with the Rennes A-Youth . His only foreign station - from a two and a half month stint during a trip through Canada apart - the Swiss FC La Chaux-de-Fonds played in the National League B from. His son Yoann (* 1986), on the other hand, has long been considered one of the greatest French player talents of the early 21st century.

For the Breton national team , Christian Gourcuff played once against the USA on December 30, 1988.

As early as 1982, he was no longer just playing on the pitch, but was also preparing himself as a player-coach for his later work, which has made him a highly respected trainer in the present.

Club stations as a player

• Stade Rennais (1972–1974)
• Union Sportive Berné (1974–1978)
• En Avant Guingamp (1978–1980)
• Football Club de Rouen (1980/81)
• FC La Chaux-de-Fonds (1981/82)
• Football Club de Lorient (1982-1986)
• Le Mans Université Club (1986–1989)
• Supra Montréal (summer 1989)
• Union Sportive Pont-l'Abbé (1989–1991)

Trainer

Christian Gourcuff had already started his coaching training as a player and was active in this double function at Lorient, Le Mans and Pont-l'Abbé. From 1991, at the age of 36, he finally concentrated on the coaching profession and worked for the next 10 years as head coach at FC Lorient , which he led into Division 2 in his first season . Although the Merlus (the club is referred to as "hake" in France) were relegated to the national team in 1993 , Gourcuff brought the team back in 1995 - and three years later even for the first time in the club's history in the top division . After relegation immediately, he made his second promotion to Division 1 in 2001 . Surprisingly for many, he left Lorient at this point in time to join the Breton “flagship” Stade Rennais , his first professional club as a player almost three decades earlier - and thereby miss FC Lorient's greatest success to date, the one at the end of the season 2001/02 had to return to the second division, but won the French Cup at the same time . For the 2002/03 season, the coach moved to Qatar and looked after Al-Ittihad . After a year in the Persian Gulf , Gourcuff returned to France, where he coached “his” FC Lorient again for the next eleven years; In 2006 he led this to Ligue 1 for the third time , where the club and its coach succeeded for the first time not to be relegated after a season at the highest level. When Gourcuff left the Merlus due to ongoing differences with the new club president Loïc Féry after the 2013/14 season, Lorient had almost become a "league inventory". In July 2014, Gourcuff decided to look for a new challenge. He accepted the offer to coach the Algerian national team . Algeria won the first four games under the new coach and thus qualified for the finals of the African Cup of Nations 2015 , in which the Fennecs were eliminated in the quarter-finals. Although Gourcuff had put Algeria on the right path in qualifying for the 2017 continental tournament , he terminated his contract with the association early and amicably in April 2016. He explained this step by saying that at the age of 61 he was once again attracted to the daily work with a club team.

After 14 years, Christian Gourcuff returned to the coaching bench at Stade Rennes in the 2016/17 season - a station that was his first as a professional player and, he hoped, would be his last as a trainer. Without specifying any specific expectations or goals for the team, he described his motivation for returning to Brittany with the words that he had “the enthusiasm of a boy and at the same time the poise of an old man”, which could “result in a good mix”. The fact that he wants to try to get his son Yoann back on track at the same time is not an easy task, but it is not his primary task in Roazhon Park . Above all, he wanted to give the league eleven game an "unmistakable identity". At the end of this season, the team finished in ninth place. After the first third of the 2017/18 season , Rennes again occupied a midfield position in the league table; But this was apparently not enough for the newly appointed club president Olivier Létang a week earlier ; therefore he released Gourcuff early on November 9, 2017.

In summer 2018 Christian Gourcuff returned to Doha , where he took over the post of head coach at al-Gharafa Sports Club until the end of May 2019 . Stéphane Le Mignan acted as his assistant there . In August 2019, Gourcuff became head coach of FC Nantes .

France Football characterizes Gourcuff's work as a mixture of passion, strategic skills and organizational talent. In case of doubt, he prefers the beautiful game over the success-oriented one and uses the 4-4-2 system if possible. He himself names Jean Prouff as the trainer who has influenced his work the most. And about his playing career he says: "If I had been my own coach - that would have gone wrong for this stubborn player."

literature

• Loïc Bervas: Christian Gourcuff, un autre regard sur le football. Liv'Éditions, Le Faouët 2013, ISBN 978-2-8449-7263-7

Web links

Commons : Christian Gourcuff  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Christian Gourcuff in the database of weltfussball.de

Notes and evidence

1. ↑ Les Top 50 des joueurs bretons. In: France Football , issue 3550 of April 29, 2014, p. 29.
2. ^ Enrico Barz: New trainer for Algeria. In: Football World Cup total. July 20, 2014, accessed September 10, 2018 . 
3. ↑ France Football of October 21, 2014, p. 11.
4. ^ Gourcuff espère Nantes . In: France Football , April 5, 2016, p. 10.
5. ^ Christian Gourcuff (Rennes): "Une nouvelle histoire". In: francefootball.fr . May 17, 2016, accessed September 10, 2018 (French). 
6. ^ Announcement in France Football from June 19, 2018, p. 4.
7. ↑ Article " Christian Gourcuff at FC Nantes new Chef-Canari " from August 17, 2019 at lemonde.fr
8. ↑ France Football of November 14, 2006, pp. 25-27.