René Girard (soccer player)

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René Girard
Personnel
birthday April 4th 1954
place of birth Vauvert ,  France
size 178 cm
position midfield
Juniors
Years station
0000-1972 Olympique Nîmes
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1972-1980 Olympique Nîmes 202 (27)
1980-1988 Girondins Bordeaux 240 (17)
1988-1991 Olympique Nîmes 92 0(5)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
1981-1982 France 7 0(1)
Stations as a trainer
Years station
1991-1992 Olympique Nîmes
1994 Olympique Nîmes
1996-1997 FC Pau
1998 Racing Strasbourg
1998-2002 France (assistant coach)
2002-2003 France U19
2003-2004 France U16
2004-2008 France U21
2009-2013 HSC Montpellier
2013-2015 Lille OSC
2016 FC Nantes
2018 Wydad Casablanca
1 Only league games are given.

René Girard (born April 4, 1954 in Vauvert , Gard ) is a former French football player and current coach . As a midfielder, he played for Olympique Nîmes and Girondins Bordeaux over 400 games in the highest French league , was champion and cup winner several times with Bordeaux and took part in the 1982 World Cup in Spain with the French national team.

He worked as a coach for various clubs and national teams and won the only French championship to date with HSC Montpellier in 2012.

The player

The club career

René Girard comes from Languedoc . He played at Olympique Nîmes as a youth , whose coach Kader Firoud used the 18-year-old midfielder for the first time in the 1972/73 season in the first division. Under Firoud, who soon no longer wanted to do without Girard's involvement, "he developed his football skills". The club was no longer one of the top teams in Division 1 at this time and mostly only occupied one place in the middle of the table.

In 1980 Girard signed a contract with the Girondins Bordeaux . There he established himself as a " water carrier " with a large radius of action at the side of midfield director Jean Tigana, also in the regular team, but with the difference that he was able to make a significant contribution in Bordeaux to winning the championship and cup titles that he had in Nîmes had failed. Girard, "athletic, technically well equipped and always focused on teamwork", quickly became an integral part of the team, which included Marius Trésor , Gernot Rohr and a little later Patrick Battiston in defense and Alain Giresse in midfield alongside Tigana . His coach Aimé Jacquet waived from 1981 on Girard only if he was injured. This also included the regular appearances in the European Cup competitions in which the Bordelais were represented annually from 1981.

Just over a year after his move, he was also appointed to the national team for the first time . After a runner-up in 1983 with his team, he became French champion in the club in 1984 and 1985 , won the national cup in 1986 and managed to win both major competitions in 1987, known in France as doublé . A year later he finished his time at Girondins Bordeaux, once again becoming runner-up, and after 16 first division seasons returned to the now second-rate Olympique Nîmes, for which he played for another three years. Girard was also involved in his return to Division 1 in 1991 before he moved to the coaching bench at the age of 37.

The national player

René Girard played seven international matches for the Équipe tricolore between October 1981 and July 1982 . At the 1982 World Cup in Spain he was part of the French squad and played five of the seven games; however, he was substituted three times (including the second round match against Austria ) only in the very last minutes and was completely absent from the semi-finals against Germany . His only international goal was in the game for third place; this early opening goal could not prevent the 2-3 defeat against Poland .

The trainer

Just a few months after his last game in the league, René Girard stepped in as head coach at Olympique Nîmes in November 1991 and played a key role in staying up. Then he seemed to want to retire from the ball game and opened a small shop for newspapers and tobacco products in Nîmes. He also used this time to acquire his coaching diploma. At the end of 1994 he helped, again only briefly, as a trainer at Nîmes. In the 1996/97 season he was then head coach at the fourth-class amateur club FC Pau . There he stayed until December 1997, before he helped secure relegation again for the second half of the 1997/98 season at first division club Racing Strasbourg .

After France won the World Cup for the first time , he was assistant coach of the French national team under Roger Lemerre from 1998 to 2002 , winning the European Championship in 2000 and the Confederation Cup in 2001 . After the unsuccessful title defense at the 2002 World Cup , in which France were eliminated in the preliminary round, Lemerre and Girard's time with the senior national team was over. Lemerre went to Tunisia and Girard took over the management of the French U19 (2002/03), then for a year the U16 and then from 2004 to 2008 the U21 national team , known as Espoirs . With the latter, he advanced to the semi-finals at the European Championships in Portugal in the summer of 2006 after conceding wins over the hosts , the German and Serbian juniors , in which the Netherlands had the better end for themselves 3-2 after extra time.

When he was replaced by Erick Mombaerts by the French association in April 2008 and instead should be entrusted with the U18, he ended his commitment to the association. After a year of searching, he took over the first division eleven of the newly promoted HSC Montpellier eleven years after his last club station . He led this in 2011 to the final of the League Cup, which was finally lost, and only one year after barely relegating in May 2012, to the great surprise of the professional world, for the first time in the club's history to win the French championship title .

René Girard at Lille OSC (2014)

From 2013 he coached the OSC Lille , which he led to third place in the final standings in the 2013/14 season behind the significantly more financially stronger Paris Saint-Germain and AS Monaco . Nevertheless, he soon had to deal with the criticism that the LOSC in particular was playing extremely defensive and unattractive; so there were frequent 1-0 victories. Girard replied that Lille was "receiving applause in England for the way he played". At the end of the 2014/15 season , Lille, only in eighth place in the table, dissolved the contract with Girard "in agreement with the 61-year-old coach". After a year break, he took over the head coach position at FC Nantes for the 2016/17 season, succeeding Michel Der Zakarian ; However, his club terminated the two-year contract after five months after a 6-0 home defeat to Olympique Lyon and the fall to the penultimate place in the table.

In September 2018 he became the coach of Moroccan runner-up Wydad Casablanca , but the activity came to an end after a few weeks due to a dispute with the club president. Girard has been the head coach of the second division Paris FC since the beginning of 2020 .

Girard's temperament and dedication repeatedly brought him into conflict with referees. Between 2009 and 2015 he was banished to the stands in seven point games.

Important dates and successes

As a player

As a trainer

As an assistant trainer

  • European Champion: 2000
  • Confederate Cup Winner: 2001

Web links

Commons : René Girard  - Collection of Images

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b Denis Chaumier: Les Bleus. Tous les joueurs de l'équipe de France de 1904 à nos jours. Larousse, o. O. 2004, ISBN 2-03-505420-6 , p. 140
  2. ↑ a b data sheet at footballdatabase.eu
  3. ↑ France Football, August 19, 2008, p. 39
  4. ↑ France Football of May 15, 2012, pp. 11 and 17f.
  5. ↑ René Girard, new entraîneur du LOSC . Communication from Lille OSC, June 14, 2013, accessed June 15, 2013 (French).
  6. ↑ Interview with René Girard in France Football of October 14, 2014, p. 37
  7. ↑ Ligue 1: Lille OSC separates from coach Rene Girard . Sport1.de, May 19, 2015.
  8. ↑ Article “ René Girard presented to the press ” from May 17, 2016 at francefootball.fr
  9. ^ Announcement " René Girard is no longer Nantes' trainer " from December 2, 2016 at lequipe.fr
  10. ↑ René Girard leaves Wydad Casablanca , lequipe.fr, November 23, 2018, accessed on December 11, 2018 (French)
  11. ↑ France Football of March 4, 2015, p. 14
  12. ↑ data sheet at L'Équipe
  13. ↑ 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, n.d.; gives 45 hits.
personal data
SURNAME Girard, René
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soccer player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH April 4th 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Vauvert , France