Franck Haise observes the same ritual in each match. At half-time, the Racing Club de Lens coach takes care to leave the locker room early enough to be on the lawn of the Bollaert stadium when the whole stadium is singing The Corons, by Pierre Bachelet. The tribute song to the mining basin has become the anthem of blood and gold supporters. “I have chills”says the coach from Normandy.
Then, at the end of the home matches, whatever the result, Franck Haise allows himself a moment of decompression by tasting, not beer, as is the tradition in the North, but wine, in the company of of four club employees. Last time on 1er January 2023, they were bottles from the Loire Valley, more precisely from chenin, a white grape variety that the coach recognized blindly. “He had very good taste”, said Franck Haise with a smile a week later. And for good reason, his team had just won (3-1) against Paris Saint-Germain. To date, Lens is the only team in Europe to have beaten PSG this season.
With its annual budget of 62 million euros, about ten times less than the Parisian club, RC Lens was not programmed to follow Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi and their partners in the Ligue 1 classification. However, after 18 matches (out of 38), the Lensois have only 6 points less than the Parisians.
Since the start of the championship, they have won all their home matches (9), before hosting AJ Auxerre on Saturday 14 January. “It’s a championship course”, notes Franck Haise without boasting, Monday, January 9. Who could have imagined that a coach unknown to the general public a few years ago would embody such success and rediscovered local pride?
“The Good Neighbor”
September 2017. In crisis, the Lensois club loses seven games in a row and logically points to last place in the Ligue 2 standings. the future of the club champion of France in 1998. Appointed at the head of the pennant team in place of Alain Casanova, Eric Sikora was then replaced on the bench of the reserve team by Franck Haise.
After a career as a defender, between the second and the third division, in the 1990s, the Norman has multiplied his experiences: player-coach, youth coach, assistant, temporary worker… Barely arrived in Lens, on a Sunday morning, he sees a hundred supporters climb the gates of the La Gaillette training center to shout their dissatisfaction with the professional team.
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