The Rugby World Cup in 2011 was not just about disagreements between coach Marc Lièvremont and his players… even if there were many! But when tensions went down again, the Blues had fun throwing challenges at their coach. The first “deal”? A victory in the quarter-final against the English for the Blues, against a mustache for Lièvremont, he says in “The Giants of Rugby”, a podcast produced by Europe 1 Studio.
The match is won, and the promise is kept! The players of the French XV then gently mock the coach, finding that his new mustache makes him look like Freddy Mercury. But the bets don’t stop there and even the deceptions go up a notch. This time, the players of the French XV offer to exchange a victory in the semi-final against the Welsh, for the coach’s shaved head.
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The match is won, but on this one, Marc Lièvremont’s wife is firmly opposed to her husband fulfilling his part of the contract. He therefore sticks to a short, military-style cut. “I look like a fire chief sergeant,” recalls Lièvremont in the “Les Géants du rugby” podcast. “At the time of my life when I was the most publicized, I managed to disfigure myself with this ridiculous mustache.”
The “mustache phenomenon” among supporters
This mustache amuses everyone, from New Zealand to France. Journalists come to press conferences with fake mustaches and in French bars, supporters, young and old, men and women, also draw a mustache to show their support for the coach and the Blues during their matches. There is then a real “mustache phenomenon”, says Marc Lièvremont, and an emulation around the Blues who came far in the competition.
They still have the grand final to play against the All Blacks. The New Zealanders had already largely beaten them a few weeks earlier, during a group match. All the French, and their mustaches, are therefore gathered behind the XV of France for this last meeting. Marc Lièvremont recounts this final where the entire stadium held its breath until the end, in “The Giants of Rugby”, an original podcast produced by Europe 1 Studio.