Half-way through the season is still a long way off, and Christmas is not yet over, but a fourth Ligue 1 manager has already been asked to pack his bags. After Lyon, Marseille and, more recently, Rennes, FC Nantes has chosen to part ways with its coach, Pierre Aristouy. Eleventh in the French championship, the club announced in a press release that it had terminated the duties of the 43-year-old technician on Wednesday, November 29, confirming information from L’Equipe. Former player of the yellow and green house – like Aristouy –, the former coach of Guingamp, Bordeaux and Lille, Jocelyn Gourvennec, should succeed him according to a source close to the club cited by Agence-France-Presse (AFP).
Former coach of the U19s and the Canaries reserve, Pierre Aristouy took the reins of the Nantes team four days before the end of last season, while the winner of the 2022 Coupe de France – and finalist of the next one – was poorly engaged in the race to maintain. At the end of a thrilling final day, the novice technician allowed FC Nantes to escape, the club from the banks of the Erdre winning its first victory after four months of drought at the very end of the championship (against Angers) . Confirmed in his functions at the start of the summer, because he embodies “the DNA of FC Nantes”, capable of “making this link between training and professionals, which was not really the case for several years”, according to the general manager of FC Nantes, Franck Kita, Pierre Aristouy did not survive the recent poor form of his players.
With just one point taken in the last four days, FC Nantes fell back to the second half of the Ligue 1 standings, which prompted the Nantes leaders to change coach. Another former club player should arrive, according to the source cited by AFP, Jocelyn Gourvennec.
A twentieth coach in Nantes since 2007
A creative playmaker with a sinusoidal career – from the same generation as Zinédine Zidane, he came close to the French team, before “eating [his] black bread” – Gourvennec notably wore the colors of the Canaries and the Olympique de Marseille, before switching to coaching. “My parents, teachers, undoubtedly shared with me this desire to transmit. Very early on I wanted to be a coach,” he recounted, interviewed by Le Monde in 2022. If he was fed lessons from Jean-Claude Suaudeau and Raynald Denoueix, two apostles of the beautiful game in Nantes, Jocelyn Gourvennec nevertheless followed his path without dreaming of being a football theoretician, “neither a teacher nor a giver of lessons”, he insisted.
After Laurent Blanc in Lyon, replaced by Fabio Grosso, Marcelino in Marseille – who left the Marseille city after only seven matches, and who was succeeded by Gennaro Gattuso – and Bruno Genesio in Rennes, recently replaced by the returning Julien Stéphan, Pierre Aristouy is the fourth Ligue 1 technician to leave this season. A waltz of coaches which continues, after a 2022 season equaling the “record” of twelve changes on the benches of the French championship – a phenomenon denounced at the end of the season by the National Union of Coaches and Technical Executives of French Football (Unecatef) in a press release.
Jocelyn Gourvennec is familiar with these rotations, having left his position in Bordeaux, then Lille, before the end of his contract. Expected at Jonelière, the Nantes training center on the banks of the Erdre, from Wednesday, the man who led Guingamp to a victory in the Coupe de France (in 2014) should lead his first training session there. A pure product of the Nantes team, Jocelyn Gourvennec in turn sits on the bench of a club with chronic instability, engaged for years in the pursuit – nostalgic – of its legendary game, but which has been struggling for several seasons to avoid relegation. At 51, Gourvennec will be the team’s twentieth coach since the club was taken over by Waldemar Kita in 2007.
