Didier Deschamps still sees the scene. In 1982, a Cadillac “Longer than the house” parked in front of his parents’ house. The Bordeaux president, Claude Bez, blows on his big cigar and offers the teenager to join the Girondins training center. Despite the regional proximity, the 14-year-old Bayonnais has already chosen FC Nantes.
The project and the ways of the “Canaries” are more suited to the values of the family. “Bez went so far as to say to my parents: “Enter the number you want”. This is where my grandfather said: “But he’s a horse dealer” ”, remembers the coach of the Blues thirty-eight years later at the microphone of France Bleu.
In the summer of 1990, fate ended up sending the whole fresh international product to Bordeaux. At the age of 21, Didier Deschamps discovered the club and his life as a castle, in the center of Haillan. The Girondins live on credit and the bubble will soon explode, which the player does not yet know. He arrives backwards and with his head – hard – bad days.
“Catastrophe”
Unhappy with his first season at Olympique de Marseille (OM), Bernard Tapie sent him on loan – “To give him a go” – at Claude Bez, this rival who inspires hatred and contempt for the president of OM. “After Nantes, the march was a bit high for Didier in Marseille. He wanted to stay, but Tapie promised to shine the bench all season, so he made a difference ”, remembers Christophe Hutteau, Bordeaux correspondent for The team at the time.
There is a worse situation than joining a reigning vice-champion of France and his squad studded with internationals
After all, there is a worse situation than joining a reigning vice-champion of France and his squad studded with internationals. One of them, Jean-Philippe Durand, nevertheless guesses that the 1990-1991 cuvée risks turning sour. “Bez couldn’t bear to lose the title in the last few days against OM. He didn’t trust some players anymore and fired half of the team in the offseason ”, still regrets the midfielder.
The tone is set. “It is very quickly the disaster, continues the playmaker, Jean-Marc Ferreri. Raymond Goethals is leaving at the beginning of August and it is the beginning of the chain of all our misfortunes. “After nine days, Didier Deschamps has already known three coaches (Goethals, interim Gernot Rohr and Gérard Gili).
Pushed towards the exit, in Marseille, by the arrival of Franz Beckenbauer, Gili finds Deschamps in Bordeaux, left a few weeks earlier at OM. “Didier has only one goal: to return to Marseille and show Tapie that he was wrong, explains the technician. Regardless of the context, his interest was to be good because he knew he was being watched. ”
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