Patrice Lair

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Patrice Lair (2013)

Patrice Lair (born June 16, 1961 in Saint-Brieuc ) is a former French football player who has worked as a coach ever since and has made a name for himself in women's football , where he won a dozen national and international titles.

Player career

In his earliest childhood, Patrice Lair played football for small clubs in the region where he was born in northern Brittany, until 1976 in Fréhel and then in Plancoët . In 1977 he joined Stade Briochin , whose colors the midfielder represented for ten years. From 1987 he was in the eleven of the US Avranches , which had just risen from the Division d'Honneur to the fourth (amateur) league. Due to two sports injuries, he began his coaching training at this time and then worked as a player- coach at numerous other amateur clubs (including FC Perigueux, the US Saint-Malo, FC Trélissac and ESA Brive ); During this time he often stayed with a club for just one season.

Coaching activities

Clubs as coaches (without player- coach
times) 		from ... to
Stade de Reims B. 2000 – end of 2002
Stade de Reims
(Assistant) 		2001 – end of 2002
AS Angoulême
(Assistant) 		2003
Villeneuve-Saint-Germain 2004/05
Montpellier HSC (women) 2005-2007
Entente Castelnau Le Crès 2007/08
BeninBenin Espoirs de Savalou 2009
RwandaRwanda U17 national team Spring 2010
RwandaRwandaA national team
(assistant) 		Spring 2010
Olympique Lyon (women) 2010-2014
Paris Saint-Germain FC (Women) 2016-2018
Chamois Niort 2018–
As of May 30, 2018
Patrice Lair at work

In 2000 he got a job as coach of the second team at Stade Reims . There he was promoted after a year in addition to assistant to Marc Collat at Stade's second division eleven. When he was released early in December 2002, Lair was supposed to succeed him, but he did not accept the offer because he would have felt such a step "as a stab in the back of Collat". This solidarity stance was possibly also reinforced by the fact that Collat ​​had come to Reims from Lair's ex-club in Saint-Brieuc. Instead, he went in 2003, again as an assistant coach, to AS Angoulême , which played in the third division ; there, after an argument with the player Steve Savidan, the chair was put in front of the door. During the 2004/05 season he worked as head coach at another amateur club from Villeneuve-Saint-Germain . In retrospect, Patrice Lair justified this rather modest career both as a player and as a coach with the words that he “preferred to enjoy life” and was “too little career conscious”.

This changed fundamentally in 2005 when he took the coaching position at the women's first division club Montpellier HSC . The MHSC had won the French championship in the previous two seasons, after which the autocratic club president Louis Nicollin had nevertheless dismissed the coach; Lair was therefore under considerable pressure of expectation. In his first season he led the defending champions to second place in the table, but the gap to Juvisy FCF was clear with nine points. In return, Lair's players reached the semi-finals of the European national championship competition , at least won the French Cup at the end of the season , and Nicollin gave him a “second chance”. But in the following season it was again only enough to runner-up, and even if Montpellier won the cup again - champions Olympique Lyon were defeated on penalties - the president replaced his coach with former MHSC player Sarah M'Barek .

Patrice Lair stayed in Languedoc and found a position as trainer for the men of the Entente Castelnau Le Crès FC, which were competing in the seventh highest division for the 2007/08 season . He was then unemployed. In 2009 he took the head coach position at the Espoirs de Savalou , a first division club from Benin , which ended prematurely after just a few games. In 2010, the Rwandan Football Association signed him for its U17 youth national team and also as assistant coach for the men's national team . But when Lair was vacationing with his family in Montpellier in the summer, he received a call from the Olympique Lyon office looking for a successor to Farid Benstiti , his long-time successful coach of the women's team.

Patrice Lair stayed with Olympique for four years and won the French championship and at least one other title with the women in each of these seasons: this was the 2011 UEFA Women's Champions League , which his women defended in 2012, and from 2012 to 2014 each National cup. At the only unofficial Club World Championship (Mobcast Cup) 2012 in Japan, the winners were also Olympique Lyon.
In these successes, the coach undoubtedly benefited from the fact that under Benstiti Lyon had already developed into a reservoir for French and foreign national players; but also under Lair there were ten players in France for the 2011 World Cup and nine for the 2013 European Championship . And he was able to keep the level of the team high even when the club significantly reduced the budget of the footballers for the first time in the 2012/13 season . In mid-2013, Patrice Lair was even briefly under discussion as the successor to the women's national coach Bruno Bini .

In spring 2014 he asked the club president to terminate his contract early at the end of the season, because for him "four years was a very long time" and he "needed new challenges". Olympique Lyon has signed Gérard Prêcheur as his successor . Patrice Lair had not accepted a new coaching position in the following two years, but could imagine working again in men's football. Since September 2014, he has worked as an expert on the weekly women's football program Femmes 2 foot on Eurosport .

Lair then signed a contract with runners-up Paris Saint-Germain FC for the 2016/17 season , where he again - as six years earlier in Lyon - replaced Farid Benstiti as head coach of the women's team. During the summer break, Paris had experienced a significant fluctuation in personnel, so that the club's management assumed it would be a "year of development". Of course, Lair didn't want to know anything about it: “I want to be successful right away.” Right from the start, he placed great emphasis on strengthening the defensive, and with success. At the end of 2016, PSG's defense around goalkeeper Katarzyna Kiedrzynek had an absolutely sparkling white vest in the league, and the women led the table without losing points after they had defeated series champions Lyon themselves. In the second half of the season, however, Lair's team weakened and ended up only in third place. Instead, the capital's team reached the final in the European Cup , but Olympique Lyon had the upper hand. A year later PSG were runner-up and the club offered him a one-year contract extension if the women should win the French cup final against Lyon. Lair rejected this and instead signed as head coach for the men's second division team Chamois Niort .

Palmarès as a coach

  • French women's champion: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 (and runner-up in 2006, 2007, 2018)
  • French Women's Cup winner: 2006, 2007, 2012, 2013, 2014
  • UEFA Women's Champions League winners: 2011, 2012 (and finalist 2013, 2017)
  • Mobcast Cup (unofficial club world championship) winner: 2012

Web links

Notes and evidence

  1. ↑ a b Quote from the article from footengo69.fr mentioned under web links
  2. ^ Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau / Tony Verbicaro: Stade de Reims - une histoire sans fin. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2001, ISBN 2-911698-21-5 , p. 241
  3. ↑ see the article “A briochin becomes technical director in Rwanda” from April 15, 2010 at Le Télégramme
  4. ↑ see for example the article "Lyon remporte la Mobcast Cup" from November 25, 2012 at La Voix du Nord
  5. ↑ France Football, September 11, 2012, p. 14
  6. ↑ France Football, July 30, 2013, p. 47
  7. ↑ see the interview with Patrice Lair (“Je suis un fou”) on April 9, 2014 in Le Progrès
  8. ↑ see the article “Au bout d'un moment, c'est difficile de trouver la motivation” from April 11, 2014 at footofeminin.fr
  9. ↑ see the message from September 22, 2014 at footofeminin.fr
  10. ↑ Article “ A new PSG meets Europe ” from October 6, 2016 at footofeminin.fr
  11. ↑ Article " Cup final - PSG without Patrice Lair, who officially signed with Niort " from May 29, 2018 at footofeminin.fr
personal data
SURNAME Lair, Patrice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soccer player and soccer coach
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Brieuc