The dean back in the elite. Friday, June 2, Le Havre was crowned champion of Ligue 2. A place offering him a rise in Ligue 1, after 14 long years of absence. The oldest French club Le Havre will finally be able to offer its Océane stadium the posters for which it was designed.

The unexpected slowdown at the end of an exceptional season delayed the deadline, but it’s done, and the large blue ship placed at the entrance to the city since 2012 capsized with joy in the last minutes of the match against Dijon. “We are in Ligue 1, we are in Ligue 1”, sang the more than 23,000 supporters massed in the blue enclosure which had sounded hollow for a decade.

Several dozen of them, in too much of a hurry, almost spoiled the party by invading the field at the very end of added time, causing the match to be interrupted. After a quarter of an hour of uncertainty, the referees reappeared on the field to give the final whistle, even though the Dijonnais had not returned, and the supporters then descended en masse on the lawn to celebrate.

While in the 2000s, the Ciel et Marine club went back and forth quickly between Ligue 1 and Ligue 2, this comeback is the result of an unexpected chemistry brought by a new management team installed last summer by American owner Vincent Volpe.

Jean-Michel Roussier (passed by Marseille, Nancy and Mediapro) as president, the very young retiree Mathieu Bodmer as sports director and Luka Elsner, his last coach in Amiens (2019-2020) on the bench, had considered other clubs before becoming interested in Le Havre. Arrived a week before the resumption of training, with a technical staff to recompose and a workforce to rebuild urgently, all without a lot of means, they did not imagine such success in their first season.

Although dull for several seasons, the HAC also started with a 0-0 draw against Grenoble and a 1-0 defeat at Valenciennes… Except that Elsner’s men then did not lose for 32 matches. in a row in the league, equaling a 2nd division record set by SC Sedan in 1955. The recipe? An effective cocktail between a contingent of vengeful players forgotten in their former clubs and some products from the club’s solid training center, often neglected by former coach Paul Le Guen (2019-2022).

The whole is rarely spectacular, the HAC averages just over one goal per game (8th attack in L2), but its defense is intractable: 19 goals conceded in 38 games.

At the UNFP Trophies on Sunday, Elsner was voted Ligue 2’s best manager and the HAC placed four players in the league’s star squad.

Leader since the 14th day, the HAC could have validated its rise much earlier but slowed down in the spring, with a high proportion of draws and two defeats in a row at the end of the season when it had none until then. suffered only one in August.

Enough to doubt some supporters, not yet recovered from the last two occasions when Le Havre had touched the L1. In 2016, just after the arrival of Volpe, the HAC had been beaten by one goal by Metz. And in 2018, he failed in the play-off in Ajaccio, during a nightmarish match peppered with incidents on and around the pitch. The bad spell is broken and the majestic Océane stadium will now host the elite of French football. In the euphoria of this unexpected season, he had also experienced the first sold-out HAC match in its history at the end of December for the reception of Bordeaux.

The last ascent in 2008 did not leave only good memories. After a season of domination in L2, the HAC had remained ghostly in Ligue 1 and had been sent directly to the antechamber. It is now up to the club’s new trio to prove history wrong.