Who is Christophe Galtier: from sending Gallardo to hospital to being the great candidate to lead Messi and Mbappé at PSG

While Santiago Nasar spent his last hours in the Colombian Caribbean city where the action takes place Chronicle of a death foretoldMauricio Pochettino is still the coach of Paris Saint-Germain these days. “There are many rumors. They’ve already kicked me out every week, “recalled the man from Santa Fe a few days ago. Although the club didn’t formalize his separation, the dance of names from which his replacement would emerge has been danced for a long time in the French capital. .

Zinedine Zidane, the Brazilian Thiago Motta, the German Joachim Löw, the Spaniard Roberto Martínez, the Italian Antonio Conte and even Marcelo Gallardo were cited as candidates to land on that bench where Pochettino still sits and which, according to his contract, should occupy until June 2023. Among so many brilliant names, in the last few hours one less resounding has been heard: Christophe Galtier.

The decision would mark a first for the club: in the 11 years of managing the Qatar Sovereign Investment Fund, PSG has never looked for a coach to work for a French league team. During this period, Carlo Ancelotti, Laurent Blanc, Unai Emery and Thomas Tuchel passed in front of Pochettino. All have arrived with recent documents from outside of France. Galtier is the other side.

This 55-year-old from Marseille started his career as an assistant at his hometown Olympique (the club where he made his football debut in 1985) in 1999, just weeks after hanging up his boots (his last club was Liaoning on the Chinese side) . Shortly after starting this journey and while he was Bernard Casoni’s assistant, He starred alongside Marcelo Gallardo in the most embarrassing event of his career.

On 7 April 2000, during the half-time of the match that Olympique and Monaco played at the Velodrome for the 34th round of Ligue 1, Gallardo and Galtier got into a fight in the corridor that connected the pitch and the changing rooms. River’s current DT ended up in a hospital that night, with swollen face, black eye and badly bruised 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, suspended for six months due to that accident whose gravity also attracted the attention of Marie Buffet, the Minister of Sport of the government led by Jacques Chirac. “What happened was extremely serious for top-level sport, professional sport and sport in general. What an example for young people who see their idols attacking each other in the corridors of a stadium, “the official complained.

Despite that skirmish and the suspension he had to serve, Galtier continued to work at Olympique until mid-2001. Then he had experiences abroad in the Greek Aris Thessaloniki, in the Emirates Al Ain and in the English Portsmouth, and also played in his country in Bastia, Sochaux and Olympique de Lyon, always as an assistant.

His first experience as head coach began on 15 December 2009, when Saint-Etienne sacked Alain Perrin, the coach with whom he was assistant and with whom he had also worked at Sochaux and Lyon. He had to take charge of a team that had only won one of their last nine games and was flirting with relegation.

Galtier managed that season to keep the most successful club in Ligue 1 history in first place. And in subsequent seasons he brought him back to the fore: he was League Cup champion in 2013 and brought him to the Europa League in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.

On 29 December 2017, six months after leaving Saint-Etienne, it fell to him to take over a well-beaten team: Lille, which came from a short and unsuccessful cycle under the command of Marcelo Bielsa. After taking the reins with the team in the penultimate step of the standings, Galtier managed to keep it earlier, as had happened in the green jersey team eight years earlier.

After a second place in 2019 and a commendable fourth place in 2020, Galtier’s Lille achieved what seemed impossible: they dethroned Paris Saint-Germain and took the title in 2021. And he did it with a modest budget and a starless squad, which he invented on the advice of Portuguese Luis Campos, presented this week as the new sports advisor for the men’s branch of PSG football.

Just two days after taking the title, he announced his departure. “This four-year cycle is long enough for a coach. I feel like this is the time to leave this beautiful club. I need something else. I don’t want to fall into routine, as happens so many times, as happened to me in Saint-Etienne ”, he justified.

From there he moved to Nice, with which he completed an acceptable first season, in which he finished fifth in Ligue 1 (obtained the qualification to the Conference League) and second in the French Cup (lost the final against Nantes). In that tournament, they knocked out Paris Saint-Germain in the round of 16 and Jorge Sampaoli’s Olympique de Marseille in the quarter-finals.

None of this, however, satisfied Julien Fournier, Nice’s football director, who drew a rather gray balance last Friday in an interview published in L’Equipe. “I think Galtier could have been more successful. This team, thus constituted, could have achieved better results. With more offensive thrust, sometimes with more courage ”, said the leader, quite casual towards the coach.

According to L’Equipe, the link between Galtier and Fournier has reached “a point of no return” and although the DT has an extra year on the contract, on the Cote d’Azur they already know they won’t have it next season. “When a club like PSG comes looking for one of your players or your manager, it’s hard to say no,” acknowledged Fournier. Everything indicates that he will soon receive an offer from the French capital that he will not be able to refuse.