Dsince 2008, Olivier Ménard has been playing them as metronomes in The evening team (EDS), where his merry band of columnists deciphers with precision and acidity (and sometimes a little bad faith) the football news. The success is such that the show celebrates, Monday, February 21, its 3,000and broadcast with a new film in tribute to this great adventure, shot by journalist Sébastien Tarrago. On this anniversary, Point went to take stock with the principal concerned.
Point : Did you expect to reach 3,000 shows when you started The evening team in 2008 ?
Olivier Menard: Not at all. When you start a concept, you don’t have the idea that it will necessarily last. We wanted to make a show that looks like us. Even today, we project ourselves into the next day and not particularly in the long term.
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What was the original idea, the concept of the show? What new did you want to bring?The program is based on an observation: in 2008, the Internet really emerged. I presented the newspapers at the time, it was factual information. You give the results; for example: Federer against Nadal, it’s 6-4 6-4. OK, let’s listen to it. And after ? Gradually, we realize that the very development of technology means that people will no longer listen to classic news bulletins, because we receive alerts everywhere. The client no longer needs to make the effort to get the info of the result. The sporting result is therefore no longer the point of arrival of the information but the point of departure. He then makes us propose a reading of the result, an observation, a statistic, a post-match statement, etc.
You are a privileged witness to the evolution of football over the past fifteen years. How has it evolved, in your opinion?
It has evolved technically, on rhythm and tempo. It was the beginning of the rise of Spanish football, with in particular the advent of Guardiola, followed by the rise of German coaches who brought even more speed to the circulation of the ball. There is almost no more preparation time; we are in recovery and projection. That’s all for the attack, a sort of “ping-pong football”.
Football has changed, because we too have changed. Recently we discussed the case of Kurt Zouma who hit his cat several times. It’s amazing to be able to talk about that on a sports show.
Why ?
Suddenly, everything becomes a social fact in football.
Do you think this is something positive?
I don’t know if it’s positive or not, but it’s a marker of the era. We are not philosophers, we are just witnesses to what is happening around us. Personally, it’s not a subject that makes me raise the ceiling of the Zouma affair, but, at the same time, it’s captivating, because it’s an event that took place at his home, with staging videos… There’s something unreal about it, whereas it is indeed the reality… Before, the stars protected their privacy; today, they expose it.
In 3,000 shows, what was the show’s most divisive theme?
PSG, since the arrival of the Qataris in 2011, has become the solar system of our show, and of French sport in general. When Zlatan Ibrahimovic arrives in our championship, it is an event, again, unreal. The most divisive: in hindsight, it was coach Unai Emery.
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It’s explained in the documentary: it’s a subject that shared the band of theDHS whereas I find that we had all the bases to make good programs on the subject. We had very well-informed columnists, on the side of the players and also the coach. But it became something very stressful to deal with. Then it’s still sport: we can argue, but it generates so many tensions…
Are foreign coaches more criticized than nationals in France?
The debate has come back to the table with us on several occasions. I don’t think much of it personally. We are representative in the program of this debate: there are people convinced, like columnists, that we have a good side with the French with so-called supporting arguments. And others who reply that they are attacked too much. In general, the debate crystallizes around the French. We would protect him more, so we would pass less to strangers.
I was watching a program on Canal+ a short time ago: they had brought together all the French players who had played in the Premier League and who had a vision on the English press. Basically, their message was to say: the English are protected and the others are massacred. Here again, we can reasonably doubt, because the British press has released things on Wayne Rooney, for example, or on John Terry, which shows that it is not so clear cut.
At the beginning of the film broadcast in tribute to this 3,000and broadcast, we see a sequence where Raymond Domenech explains that he does not want to intervene on the set in the presence of one of your regular columnists. Doesn’t that bother you?
That does not bother me. There are other “couples” who are separated on the set… It’s not them who decide, but us. So that the rendering on the air is direct, fresh, light and friendly, do not select columnists who do not want to intervene with others. Because it will pollute the show: they won’t talk to each other, won’t debate, so the circulation of words will be disrupted. We can argue, disagree, but if the background is bad, the result will be unhealthy.
From there, I’m not taking any risks. Afterwards, if a person starts telling me that they don’t want to intervene with so-and-so… They risk excluding themselves… We’re not all friends, but once we’re around the table, we are happy to have a good time sharing our passion and our reading.
Have you ever argued with someone on set?
I remember a strong argument with Gervais Martel. We had gone a little far: I had information that he was going to be fired by the president at the time, Hafiz Majid Mammadov. We were young and sanguine; we lacked a bit of hindsight. On social networks, we titled: “Adieu Martel! It was a little violent… Gervais intervenes in the program by telephone, asks where my information comes from. I answer that I do not reveal my sources. We chat, we argue and it rots me. He ends up throwing at me: “You will no longer be a presenter of the program that I will still be president of RC Lens. We can be yelled at, that’s normal, especially since it didn’t happen. So the info was wrong.
Who is the guest you would like to have on the set of theDHS ?
Today I answer Federer. He is an international star, a world legend, who speaks French. And when you have a guy of this caliber, you don’t talk to him about football, but about his sport. At best, we talk a little about the last France-Switzerland… For fun… He is one of the kings today and there are not many of them next to him: Djokovic, Nadal, they don’t speak French too much, that doesn’t make A program ; Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lebron James…
The Swiss marked his sport, it is a premium for aesthetics. Play nice and win. It is a debate that we have often had, in particular with the French team of Didier Deschamps. It wins, but it could be better… Federer, we want him to explain to us how he manages to be so elegant on a course, so light. What exercises does he work on?
How do you see the future ofDHS to continue to interest the viewer?
I’m constantly thinking about the evolution of the show, but I don’t have a five-year plan. I think about it a lot during the Easter holidays in view of the return to school in September. At the moment, I’m working a lot on the first part: it’s a reflection we have with Jérôme Saporito. We brought in Olivia Leray this year for “La Manita”, because we say to ourselves that the writing of the first part must contrast with that of the second.
The person looking at P1 is doing something else at the same time: cooking, cleaning, etc. Which is less the case for the P2, in the second part of the evening where we are settled and concentrated. We therefore say to ourselves that we must offer shorter, more marked, faster formats in P1, etc. Hence “La Manita”: five facts. Learn things with a smile. It should be light and stay informative. We are working a lot on that. We reserve a few surprises for the start of the school year in this direction. And, above all, the program must not be unbalanced and I must make sure to leave time for the speakers so that they can express themselves. Otherwise, they will sulk, they like the fight (laughs).