Marcelo Gallardo once again face to face with Christophe Galtier, the PSG coach with whom he had a fight and ended up in hospital

The friendly between psg Y Riyadh seasona combination of footballers from La Liga de Saudi Arabia was sold as the possible last duel between Lionel Messi Y Cristiano Ronaldoin addition to the inevitable presence of two other absolute cracks such as kylian mbappe Y Neymar Jr. But there will be another clash with its own (and perhaps unknown) history in the replacement banks, the one that will have to face off Marcellus Gallardo Y Christopher Galtierthe DTs in charge of the “match”.

El Muñeco, jobless since announcing his departure River, was invited to be part of the event and accepted without hesitation. And the Frenchman, who tries to recover his players to resume the triumphant march in championship 1 and preparing the duels for the round of 16 of the Champions League against Bayern Munich in mid-February, he was forced to accept due to the more than 11 million dollars that the club will receive in economic benefits.

What few have taken into consideration (or not) is that Gallardo and Galtier have a very warm story, and that it returns now that they will have to shake hands (or not) on the occasion of the international friendly which will play this afternoon from 14:00, with a Star+ broadcast.

Galtier began his career as an assistant at his hometown Olympique de Marseille, where he made his playing debut in 1985. His first time as an assistant came in 1999, just weeks after hanging up his boots (his last was Chinese Liaoning). But shortly after starting this journey and working with Bernard Casoni, starred with Marcelo Gallardo in the most embarrassing event of his career.

On 7 April 2000, during half-time of the match between Olympique and Monaco at the Velodrome for the 34th round of Ligue 1, Gallardo and Galtier had a fist fight in the corridor between the pitch and the dressing rooms. River’s former DT ended up in a hospital that night, with a swollen face, a black eye and a battered chest, and reported that he was the victim of an ambush.

“Gallardo insulted and beat me. I responded with a self-defense reflex.”, justified Galtier, who was suspended for six months because of that accident whose seriousness also attracted the attention of Marie Buffet, minister of sport in the government led by Jacques Chirac. “What happened is very serious for top-level sport, for professional sport and for sport in general. What an example for young people who see their idols attacking each other in the halls of a stadium,” the official lamented.

Despite that skirmish and the suspension he had to serve, Galtier continued to work at Olympique until mid-2001.. He then gained experience abroad at the Greek Aris Thessaloniki, the Emirati Al Ain and the English Portsmouth, and he also worked in his country at Bastia, Sochaux and Olympique de Lyon, always as an assistant, until he took over December 2009. of Saint Etienne.

Today Galtier leads the most powerful team in the world and has a duty to meet the expectations of the Qatari tycoons and win the Champions Leaguea mission that no one has managed to accomplish until now and that earned his predecessor, Mauricio Pochettino, the job.

Gallardo, who stood out as a footballer in Monaco and also played a couple of seasons psg, left a pleasant impression in Paris and last year was cited as a candidate to fill the post of Poche when he ran River. For this reason, now that he is free, nobody excludes that in the future he may have the chance of him in case Galtier is forced to leave his current position, an electric chair for pressures and objectives. The future will speak.

For now, we’ll have to watch this afternoon’s friendly to see how Gallardo and Galtier greet each other, if at all. Twenty years and more passed, they succeeded as coaches and they will have the opportunity to leave that episode behind with a simple handshake.