Olivier Echouafni

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Olivier Echouafni during the Women's European Championship 2017

Olivier Echouafni (born September 13, 1972 in Menton ) is a French former football player who has worked as a coach since he ended his playing days . From September 2016 to August 2017 he was the head coach of France's women's senior national team .

Player career

The son of a Moroccan father and a French mother was born near the border with Italy . When he was six, his parents registered him with AS Monaco ; for this club he played during his entire youth and then until 1993 in an amateur team of the club. Then he moved to Olympique Marseille , where he was regularly used in his first year with the reserve team. After Marseille's first team for the 1994/95 season had been forcibly transferred to the second division due to their involvement in the " OM-VA affair " and Olympique had to increasingly rely on young players, Olivier Echouafni played his first game in the league team in autumn 1994. The midfielder soon became a regular in this. By 1998 he had 86 point games with eight goals of his own in the second and - from 1996 - the top division .

In 1998 he signed a contract with league rivals Racing Strasbourg , where he was also part of the regular formation in the following two seasons, as well as from 2000 in Brittany at Stade Rennes . With these two clubs he played a total of 129 games in the first division and scored 17 goals. At Rennes, Echouafni suffered a serious knee injury at the end of 2001 that put him out of action for nine months. In 2003 Echouafni returned to his home region on the Côte d'Azur , where he practiced his sport seven more first division seasons at OGC Nice . He completed another 230 point games. However, he has not been able to win titles with his clubs in his 16 career years.

Club stations

  • AS Monaco (1978-1993, in the youth and amateur field)
  • Olympique Marseille (1993–1998, in the first team from 1994)
  • Racing Strasbourg (1998-2000)
  • Rennes Stadium (2000-2003)
  • OGC Nice (2003-2010)

Coaching career

In 2012, Olivier Echouafni completed his coaching training , which he began immediately after completing his playing days, with the acquisition of a license for the professional field ( Brevet d'Entraîneur Professionnel de Football , BEPF for short). In the next one and a half years he was not in this profession, but as a consultant and co-commentator for the television station BeIn Sports . It was not until September 2013 that he got his first head coach position at the third division club SC Amiens , whose trainer had been dismissed early after a disastrous start to the season. Echouafni led his league eleven in 2013/14 to sixth place in the final ranking and thus drew the attention of the second division FC Sochaux , who had separated from Hervé Renard and the novices for the 2014/15 season, more experienced coaches such as Jean Fernandez and Daniel Sanchez preferred. His first year with the Lionceaux ended with a midfield rank after the team had even played for promotion at times. When the men of FC had only won three points after six match days in the following season, the new (Chinese) owners of the club fired the coach in September 2015.

Olivier Echouafni then worked again as a TV commentator, this time for France 3 . Twelve months later, in September 2016, the French football association FFF surprised the public with the information that it had appointed the coach, who had previously been absolutely inexperienced in connection with women's football, as the successor to the prematurely dismissed Philippe Bergeroo as the new head coach of the women's senior national team - By the way, Bergeroo had been Echouafni's club coach at Stade Rennes for a while at the beginning of the 21st century. The new head coach of the Bleues took on the former national player and club coach Peggy Provost as his assistant. The coach achieved his first success in his new role in spring 2017 by winning the SheBelieves Cup after victories over the hosts and against England as well as a draw against Germany . But when the French were eliminated in the quarter-finals at the European Championships - the only defeat in 15 matches under Echouafni - the coach was dismissed from this position by FFF President Noël Le Graët despite an initial "verbal job guarantee" and from September 2017 by Corinne Diacre replaced.

For the 2018/19 season , runner-up and Champions League participant Paris Saint-Germain FC signed him as head coach of his first division women , where he succeeded Patrice Lair . Bernard Mendy remains assistant coach under Echouafni .

literature

  • Alain Pécheral: La grande histoire de l'OM. Des origines à nos jours. Ed. Prolongations, o. O. 2007, ISBN 978-2-916400-07-5

Web links

Notes and evidence

  1. ↑ Pécheral, pp. 325f.
  2. ^ Pécheral, p. 374
  3. ↑ Numbers from Stéphane Boisson / Raoul Vian: Il était une fois le Championnat de France de Football. Tous les joueurs de la première division de 1948/49 à 2003/04. Neofoot, Saint-Thibault o. J.
  4. ↑ see the corresponding message from June 17, 2014 at L'Équipe
  5. ↑ see the announcement of September 15, 2015 at eurosport.fr
  6. ↑ " Echouafni appointed trainer " on fff.fr
  7. ^ " Peggy Provost Assistant to Olivier Echouafni " from October 20, 2016 at footofeminin.fr
  8. ↑ Article “ Olivier Echouafni gets backing for his work from Noël Le Graët ” from August 1, 2017 at footofeminin.fr
  9. ↑ “ Olivier Echouafni appointed to the top of PSG ” from June 17, 2018 at footofeminin.fr
personal data
SURNAME Echouafni, Olivier
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soccer player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1972
PLACE OF BIRTH Menton , France