New AS Saint-Etienne coach Pascal Dupraz declared on Wednesday that he has 'the recipe' to save the Greens, who currently prop up the Ligue 1 Uber Eats table - a prestigious mission that was 'impossible to refuse'.
Pascal Dupraz, how are you feeling as you assume your duties as coach of AS Saint-Etienne?
"I am very proud to have been chosen. Just a week ago, I received a call from [ASSE executive president] Jean-François Soucasse who asked me if I was willing to meet with the club's sporting committee. From that moment on, there was no doubt about it. Personally, the ASSE, it's impossible to refuse. I arrive with a lot of humility and enthusiasm. There will be success in this difficult exercise of keeping the club in the top flight only if we share the effort. We will beat the drop - and I'm not saying 'if we beat the drop' - because everyone will have given their utmost. The situation is complicated. We have to win our first game, which is very important because it is in the Coupe de France [Sunday against Lyon-La Duchère] before preparing for the visit of Nantes [Wednesday]."
What levers can you pull to revitalise the team?
"We have to put the players in the best conditions so that they perform again. They have already performed but the fact is that they have 12 points from 18 games. The team is underperforming for a club of this standing. First of all, the players have to gain confidence in themselves because that is at least 50% of the performance. And that will reflect on the collective performance. You need a lot of empathy and kindness because some people have described me, often wrongly, as a yeller, but in fact I am above all someone who loves people, who knows how to get along with younger generations despite my advanced years [59 years]! I'll keep my tactical principles between me and the players before telling them to the media, so you can all continue to say that I am a coach who motivates the players a lot and is poor tactically. But I flatter myself to think that I have the recipe to make the team better."
What can you say about your past experiences, at Toulouse FC or SM Caen?
"At Caen, you'd have to look at the figures before and after me before talking about a failure. Coaching at Saint-Etienne was not possible for me, I was coaching at Caen, in Ligue 2, and I was fired last March. There are situational factors that have led to the fact that we are now at Saint-Etienne. In addition to being a builder [at Evian-Thonon-Gaillard], I sometimes have to carry out complicated missions, but I never do them alone. At Toulouse, it was the players who kept the team together. And at ETG, they are the ones who climbed the ladder before staying in Ligue 1 for four years. And as this club, Saint-Etienne, is inspirational to me, there can only be a favourable outcome. It is not the same challenge [as in Toulouse] because we have twice as many games left to play, and it is neither the same club, nor the same situation. In Toulouse, we had to get ten points in ten games. Here, it's only a few points with twenty games, but I still think that it's more difficult in Saint-Etienne than in Toulouse because in Toulouse, it has already been done! I have only coached clubs that were trying to beat the drop and that creates a certain force of habit."
>> ASSE: Pascal Dupraz brought in to beat the drop
(Photo: ASSE.fr)
