French coach Christophe Galtier made a two-year commitment to Paris Saint Germain, replacing Argentine Mauricio Pochettino, sources familiar with the dossier reported to the French agency AFP on Monday.
Habitually furrowed brow, deep voice, direct verb. PSG’s new coach, Frenchman Christophe Galtier, will seek to impose the new style “more rooted and with less glitter” that has marked the club’s Qatari leadership.
The new sports helmsman of the millionaire project
Without a fixed tactical scheme, attentive to the human, much closer to a José Mourinho than a Pep Guardiola and an admirer of Deschamps’s pragmatism, this is the new commander of the Parisian entity.
“I am a pragmatic and not a dogmatic coach. Guardiola is a great coach, the opposite cannot be said, but I am not a chess player, if I have to have a reference it is Didier Deschamps”, he stated in a recent interview on ‘Eurosport’. A whole declaration of intent from Galtier, who replaces the Argentine Mauricio Pochettino, a coach who has been a seasoned player in possession and has been sentenced since last March for his failure in the Champions League round of 16 against Real Madrid.
A seasoned defender of Olympique de Marseille and Lille in the 1980s and Toulouse in the 1990s, the former Nice manager took on his first big bench at the age of 55. From directing promising players, he will go on to deal with world champions, such as Mbappé and Sergio Ramos; Europeans, like Donnarumma; and the seven-time Ballon d’Or winner Leo Messi. A difficult challenge for a name little known internationally, although with a good reputation in France.
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The man from Marseille has been chosen three times as the best coach in Ligue 1. Those who know him describe him as persevering and meticulous, talkative or tough, depending on the circumstances, and close to his players, although never their friend. His greatest professional achievement was the league championship in the 2020/21 season with Lille, a team that defeated the almighty PSG.
The way to get to PSG
Until reaching the Parc des Princes, Galtier has been completing stages. He started as an assistant at Marsella, where he worked under several coaches, including Javier Clemente, between 2000 and 2001. At that time, he experienced one of his worst episodes as a professional. In an April 2001 match against AS Monaco, he allegedly assaulted Argentine Marcelo “El Muñeco” Gallardo in the locker room tunnel. Galtier, who always defended his innocence at a time when there were few cameras, was suspended for six months.
His collaborations with Aris de Thessaloniki and Bastia preceded his journey as Alain Perrin’s assistant, with whom he played for several teams for five years (Al Ain, Portsmouth, FC Sochaux, Olympique de Lyon and AS Saint-Étienne) until in 2009 He began his solo adventure, replacing precisely Perrin himself. AND
n the historic Saint-Étienne, he had good seasons, normally within the European positions, but in 2017, after eight courses, he went to the north of the country, to Lille, then piloted by the Spanish-Luxembourgish businessman Gerard López as owner and by his right hand, a certain Luis Campos who today is in charge of designing a new PSG sports project that bets on the local.
Consecrated champion of France against all odds in 2021, he embarked again towards the hot south, to Nice. In the project of Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos company, he fell somewhat below expectations in the only season he was there. Galtier uncorked, in extremis, the fifth place in the French League that gave Nice access to Europe and fell in the final of the French Cup against Nantes, after having dropped in the second round to what is now his new club, the PSG.
Now, at PSG, and with Mbappé, Neymar, Donnarumma and other figures, plus the less renowned but more effective signings that Campos is looking for (such as the Portuguese Vitinha), Galtier has before him the unprecedented challenge of winning the Champions League, Qatari ownership obsession since he landed in bought the club in 2011.
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PSG announce a press conference tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. in the Parc des Princes. It will be the presentation of Christophe Galtier as a coach. pic.twitter.com/2pdQszbfFb
– Andrés Onrubia Ramos (@AndiOnrubia) July 4, 2022
Pochettino, ‘hands tied’
Galtier’s predecessor, Pochettino, closed his Parisian stage after just under 18 months with a bitter taste. Substitute for Thomas Tuchel in January 2021, “Poche” achieved the semifinals of the Champions League in 2021 and the French championship in 2022, an insufficient balance for the Qatari management.
The former Tottenham and Espanyol coach had a dream squad, with Mbappé, Messi and Neymar up front, which he could not capitalize on, in part, due to the imbalance in the squad’s preparation, the responsibility of the Brazilian Leonardo -already out of the club – and under the supervision of Al-Khelaifi. An example of this was signing Gigi Donnarumma in the summer of 2021 in a squad that already had Keylor Navas, creating a difficult competition to manage between two goalkeepers of the highest level.
Meanwhile, PSG’s midfield has suffered from a lack of quality, with only Italian Marco Verratti having international level in that vein. “It’s not about accumulating chairs or furniture, a soccer team is creating a team of human beings (…) and they have to have certain characteristics so that they have harmony”Pochettino confessed to EFE, in an interview in March, before the fateful European clash against Real Madrid.
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EFE and AFP
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