Farid Benstiti

Farid Benstiti (2013)

Farid Benstiti (born January 16, 1967 in Lyon ) is a former French football player who, however, never played in the first division. Since the end of his playing days, he has been working as a coach in women's football and has won five national championship and three cup titles in this role so far (January 2020).

Player career

Clubs as players	from ... to
Olympique Lyon	1984-1989
Cercle Laïque Dijon	1989/90
AS Lyon-Duchère	1990-1992
KFC Avenir Lembeek	1992/93
FC Sète	1993-1995
AS Lyon-Duchère	1995-1997
US Cambuston ( Saint-André (Réunion) )	1997/98
FC Vaulx-en-Velin	1998/99
FC Gap	1999/2000

Farid Benstiti has been part of the Olympique Lyon's squad since the 1984/85 season , which played in the second division during those years . However, the midfielder only came to a few league games there and was mostly active in Lyon's reserve team. When Olympique was promoted to the first division in 1989 , he saw no sporting future for himself and moved to the second division Cercle Laïque Dijon . There, too, he was only a substitute player, the coach Yves Herbet only made a few appearances possible, so he returned to Lyon after one season - albeit to the amateur club AS Lyon-Duchère  - tried his hand at the lower-class Belgian KFC Avenir Lembeek for a year from 1992 and then again in French amateur football (including two seasons each with FC Sète and again in Duchère). In 2000 he ended his time as a player at FC Gap , where he worked as a player- coach as in his year on La Réunion .

Coaching career

Benstiti had already completed his trainer training in the mid-1990s and then gained initial experience in this new role. In 2001 he took over the position of head coach at the first division of FC Lyon . In his very first season he reached the final of the French cup competition , which was held for the first time , in which the FCL was defeated by FC Toulouse , and finished fourth in the league. But already in the following two years he led his women to cup victory and runner-up in Division 1 . When the women's football department transferred to local rivals Olympique Lyon in the summer of 2004 , Farid Benstiti found better financial conditions there and gradually strengthened the team with young players, placing particular emphasis on an offensive and attractive style of play. This continuous development soon bore fruit, as Olympique became third in the league in 2005 and 2006 and also reached the national cup final in both years , without being able to enter the list of winners.

Stations as a trainer or sports director	from ... to
FC Lyon	2001-2004
Olympique Lyon	2004-2010
FK Rossiyanka	2011/12
Russia A (women)	2011/12
Paris Saint-Germain FC	2012-2016
Dalian Quanjian FC	2017-2019
Reign FC / OL Reign	2020–

This changed fundamentally with the first championship title in the 2006/07 season , because the team built up by Benstiti defended their title in the following season, in which they also won the cup and thus the doublé . In 2009 and 2010 the third and fourth French championships followed for the coach and the club. In the four "championship years" Olympique Lyon had won 77 of their 88 league games and only lost three, scoring an average of 104 goals per season and only having to accept just under nine. In the European Cup , too, OL's performance curve was up; The women were eliminated in the semi-finals in 2008 and 2009 (against Umeå IK and FCR Duisburg ), but in 2010 they played the final , in which they were only defeated by Turbine Potsdam on penalties . Regardless of his achievements and merits, Farid Benstiti was replaced by Patrice Lair in the summer of 2010 at OL . He then worked as a talent scout for Olympique's men's department, before the club also gave up his services in this role.

In summer 2011 he accepted the offer of FK Rossijanka to act as technical director for their women's team; The new season had just started in Russia - the first after the championship had been switched from the calendar year to the multi-year season. When Russia's Dutch national coach Vera Pauw gave up her position in autumn 2011 , Farid Benstiti temporarily looked after the women's national team in parallel to his club activities . The Russians made it to second group rank behind Italy in the European Championship qualification ; However, this was not enough to participate in the finals in Sweden . At the beginning of 2012, the Frenchman took over the coaching position at Rossijanka after Tatyana Yegorova had given up this position for health reasons, and led the women from Krasnoarmeisk to win the championship.

In mid-2012, Farid Benstiti returned to France, where he coached the women of Paris Saint-Germain FC for four years , which has also invested heavily in his women's team since taking office and where high expectations were placed on the coach. At the end of his first season with the capital city club, PSG's women had won the runner-up behind Lyon and thus qualified for the Champions League. In the 2013/14 season , Paris was the only Division 1 club to beat league leaders Lyon, even in the "den of the lionesses". In the European Cup of the following season , his players also prevailed against their big national opponents and finally even reached the final, but lost 2-1 to 1. FFC Frankfurt . In 2015/16 , his Parisians finished the first division as runners-up for the fourth time in a row. The club then did not extend Benstiti's contract and brought in his place Patrice Lair, who had "inherited" him in Lyon in 2010. Six months later, Benstiti took up the position of head coach at the Chinese women's first division club Dalian Quanjian FC . After the club even had a chance of winning the double from the state championship and the state cup in December 2017 , its contract was extended until 2019. In China he then won two championship titles.

In January 2020, US NWSL participant Reign FC signed Farid Benstiti as the new head coach. At the beginning of this year, the Olympique Lyon owner company took over a majority stake in Reigns Franchise and renamed it OL Reign a few weeks after Benstiti took office .

The FIFA had received Farid Benstiti 2015 in their ten coaches comprehensive selection from which at the end of the world women coaches determined and was awarded the Ballon d'Or.

Palmarès as a coach

• French champion: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 (and runner-up in 2003, 2004, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016)
• French Cup Winner: 2003, 2004, 2008 (and finalist 2002, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2014)
• Russian champion: 2012
• Chinese champion: 2017, 2018
• European Cup: finalist 2010, 2015 (and semi-finalist 2008, 2009)

Notes and evidence

1. ↑ Transition from player to coach according to " Paris Saint-Germain FC - présentation de l'effectif " from August 28, 2015 at footofeminin.fr
2. ↑ see Benstitis data sheet at footballdatabase.eu
3. ↑ according to the article "Farid Benstiti s'est engagé avec Rossiyanka (Russie)" from July 20, 2011 at footofeminin.fr
4. ↑ see the articles “Benstiti remplace Egorova à Rossiyanka” from January 23, 2012 at uefa.com and “Turbine mourns Egorova” from August 2, 2012 at soccerdonna.de
5. ↑ see for example the article "Nouveaux visages et ambitions!" From August 14, 2012 on the PSG club website
6. ↑ see the game data sheet at footofeminin.fr
7. ↑ message Benstiti rebondit en Chine of 30 December 2016 culturepsg.com
8. ↑ after the message " Gérard Prêcheur, for his part, follows the call of China " on December 8, 2017 at footofeminin.fr
9. ↑ Reign FC appoints Farid Benstiti as head coach. In: nwssoccer.com. January 21, 2020, accessed January 29, 2020 . 
10. ↑ according to the article “ Henry and Le Sommer preselected, Prêcheur and Benstiti with the trainers ” from October 19, 2015 at footofeminin.fr