Thibault Giresse

Thibault Giresse
Giresse (2014)
Personnel
birthday	May 25, 1981
place of birth	Talence ,  France
size	172 cm
position	midfield
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
2001-2006	Toulouse FC	110 (17)
2004	→  Le Havre AC  (loan)	16 0(4)
2006-2009	SC Amiens	113 (23)
2009–	EA Guingamp	243 (52)
1 Only league games are given. Status: summer break 2017

Thibault Giresse (born May 25, 1981 in Talence ) is a French football player .

Career

Youth (until 2001)

Born in 1981 as the son of national player Alain Giresse , he started playing football for a club from Gémenos at the age of five . When his father turned his back on Olympique Marseille in 1988 and ended his career, the family moved back to the homeland of Alain and the young Thibault was registered with an amateur club from Langoiran . From there he made the leap into the youth department of the Girondins Bordeaux professional club , where his father had once played. When he took over the coaching position at FC Toulouse in 1995 , his son followed him there and belonged to the youth performance center, while at the same time he was working towards an Abitur with a focus on science. After graduating from high school, he began studying biology, which he then dropped out to focus on his football career.

From 1999 he ran regularly for the reserve team of Toulouse and was allowed to participate in several courses for the professional team under coach Robert Nouzaret . In a friendly against a Tunisian team that ended 2-2, he was on the pitch for the first time with the pros and scored a goal straight away.

Dream of a first division career with Toulouse (2001-2006)

In the run-up to the 2001/02 season, the first division club FC Toulouse was revoked its license for financial reasons, which led to relegation to the third division. For Giresse this meant that he was included in the squad for the upcoming season. He immediately became the undisputed regular in attacking midfield, never missed a single encounter and contributed nine goals to promotion at the end of the season.

The jump in 2002 to the second division was the same as that in professional football, so that Giresse could make his professional debut on August 3, 2002 in a 4-0 away win against FC Istres . He was able to maintain his place in the top eleven, although he was not as indispensable as in the previous year, and thus made his contribution to the second division championship won in 2003 and the promotion associated with it. At the age of 22 he made his debut in the top national league when he came on on August 16, 2003 in a 3-0 defeat against OSC Lille in the 59th minute for Florent Balmont . It soon became clear that he would not prevail against Balmont and the other team-internal competition, which is why he was awarded to the second division Le Havre AC in the winter break of 2003/04 .

At Le Havre he got the match practice he had hoped for, returned to Toulouse in the summer of 2004 and found himself in a role that saw him sometimes as a substitute and sometimes as a regular player. In this way a season passed that made his permanent breakthrough seem possible. During the 2005/06 season, however, he played hardly a role and therefore moved to the end of the free transfer to the second division SC Amiens .

Second division with Amiens (2006-2009)

In the Amiens jersey, he immediately became an indispensable performer and missed almost no game. In 2007 he was only missed promotion to the top division by a minimum, which means Giresse once again missed the chance to establish itself in the top division. The following years were marked by the relegation battle, even if the team was also able to draw attention to itself by moving into the cup semi-finals in 2008 . In 2009 Amiens was relegated to the third division, whereupon Giresse turned her back on the club.

Crash and soaring with Guingamp (from 2009)

In 2009, EA Guingamp was another second division team that signed him. He fought for a regular place and reached another milestone in his career when he came into play in the jersey of the previous year's cup winner in a 5-1 defeat on August 20, 2009 against Hamburger SV in the 57th minute and made his debut in the Europa League . Despite a 3-1 win in the second leg, the eleven were eliminated. Although he was not as undisputed as before in Amiens, he was usually part of the starting XI in the second division matches and had to accept relegation to the third division in 2010.

Following the relegation, Giresse revealed his qualities as a goalscorer, hit the goal a total of 21 times in 2010/11 and with this yield became the league's top scorer. At the same time, he made a significant contribution to the direct recovery of his team. Even if the offensive midfielder was no longer equally dangerous, he remained an elementary part of a team that initially established itself in the second division and made it to the top division in 2013. The 32-year-old then completed his first first division games since he had been ousted from the team at Toulouse seven years earlier. Mostly he was a member of the starting XI, even took over the captain's armband from Lionel Mathis a few times and was able to celebrate relegation at the end of the season. An even greater success was achieved shortly before with the entry into the French Cup final in 2014 . As five years before, immediately before the player's arrival in Guingamp, the opponent was again Stade Rennes and could be defeated again with a 2-0. Giresse came on in the 79th minute for Steven Langil and was able to celebrate his first win of a national title. This then made it possible to participate in the Europa League 2014/15 , in which he survived the group phase with Guingamp and was eliminated in the round of 32.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thibault Giresse , tfc.info
2. ↑ Football: Thibault Giresse , footballdatabase.eu
3. ↑ Thibault Giresse , transfermarkt.de