فوت هوستازي | News | Al-Ahly coach

“The way he deals with the players is exceptional.”

Mohamed Salah on Rudy Garcia In a previous interview with the French newspaper L’Equipe – June 2018

Rudi Garcia is one of the potential candidates to succeed Pitso Mosimane in Al-Ahly training, as he meets the specifications that the Al-Ahmar management sees for the future of the team.

The 58-year-old has never experienced coaching in the Middle East before, with his extensive experience in the French League and an Italian experience with Roma.

hard start

Corbay Essonne, one of the lower leagues in France, was the starting point for Rudi Garcia, the same club where he started his football career under the leadership of his father, Jose Garcia.

After knee and back injuries forced him to retire at the age of 28, Garcia returned to Corbay Eason and saved the club from relegation in the Divisional League before finishing second the following season.

Garcia worked from 1994 to 1996 as both a player and coach before branching out to coach the team in 1996 to 1998.

Garcia then moved to Saint-Etienne as a physiotherapist for two years and then as an analyst helping analyze opponents’ performance before being promoted to assistant coach with John Toshack in July 2000.

With the departure of Toshack to Real Sociedad, Garcia took over, in cooperation with Jean-Jay Walem, in one of the most difficult seasons for Saint-Etienne with administrative crises outside the field, bringing the team down to the second division with a deduction of seven points from its balance, to be completed Garcia was subsequently sacked in August.

Garcia returned again as a performance analyst and obtained the professional diploma for training to sign with Dijon in 2002 and lead them to the second division in 2004 and achieved a surprise by ascending to the French Cup semi-finals.

After 130 matches with Dijon, during which he achieved 54 wins, 39 draws and 37 defeats, Garcia moved in 2007 to coach Le Mans and led him to reach the ninth place in the French League and reached the League Cup semi-finals.

Disagreement, historical achievement, and discovery of stars

In June 2008, Garcia decided to leave Le Mans to coach Lille, who played in his colors for six years in the eighties.

After a period of dissatisfaction with Claude Boyle, Garcia helped improve Lille’s style.

Michel Bastos said about Garcia in 2014 To Gazzetta dello Sport before joining Roma: “His presence really helped me decide, We had a special time in Lille and he showed me better individually and the team as well“.

Bastos scored 14 goals and assisted 13 others with Garcia in the league for the 2008-2009 season and was the team’s top scorer.

Garcia finished his first season with Lille in fifth place to qualify for the European League, but despite that he was sacked in June 2009 after a dispute with Xavier Toilet, one of the club’s board members.

A departure that did not last more than 16 days, after the dismissal of Twilt, the club’s president, Michel Seydoux, offered Garcia to return and he actually agreed.

Garcia gave the opportunity to another young talent, Eden Hazard, who played 35 games in Garcia’s first season, compared to only four games as a substitute in the previous season.

Hazard said about Garcia before the friendly match against Chelsea and Roma in 2013He is an excellent coach and he is still young. He was perfect for me because I was young and showed me the right way to be a good player and to be confident in my abilities.

After a new season, he finished fourth and was The strongest attacker in the leagueIt’s time for Garcia’s biggest accomplishment with Lille.

Garcia with Lille won the league title after an absence of 57 years, and the cup after 56 years, to be crowned the best coach in the French league.

A generation led by Eden Hazard, who then moved to Chelsea in 2012, with players such as Idrissa Gana Gaye, Yohan Cabaye, Gervino, Mathieu Debuchy and Adil Rami.

Lille lost the French Super Cup and finished the following season in fourth and sixth place after that, with the loss of more than one player, led by Eden Hazard, to decide to leave at the end of the 2012-2013 season.

Garcia supervised the training of Lille in 256 matches, with 129 victories, 67 draws and 60 defeats.

Lille scored 463 goals and conceded 303.

A new trip in Italy

In June 2013, Rudi Garcia embarked on a new journey, this time in Rome. A cautious and anticipating move in the beginning with a young coach from outside Italy.

Garcia’s start was perfect with 10 consecutive victories in the league to be the first team in the history of Calcio to reach this number.

A victory in the derby over Lazio, and outside the rules with three goals against Inter and two goals against Napoli, all with clean sheets, and the team conceded one goal throughout the series, which was against Parma.

After 744 minutes without conceding goals, Roma conceded a goal from Turin in the 11th round.

Garcia said of what he first did when he took over as Roma coach in an interview with the Bleacher Report: “I worked on two main principles, developing the playing style and getting the players involved in it, as well as working on the psychological aspect to give them confidence.”

In the end, Garcia did not win the league title And he finished in second place, 17 points behind Juventus, but he brought Wolves back to the Champions League again.

Garcia returned again to win the award for the best French coach for two consecutive years in 2013 and 2014.

A subsequent season ended Roma in the same position and with the same difference of points with Juventus, and bid farewell to the Champions League from the group stage with the presence of Manchester City and Bayern Munich in the group before being eliminated by Fiorentina in the European League.

Roma started the 2015-2016 season well with Garcia and topped the league at the end of October before the collapse began after the defeat by Inter, two wins in ten games and a farewell to the cup against Spezia, a second-tier club at the time, which was the result The French coach was sacked in January 2016.

The absence of the outspoken striker in Garcia’s team (before signing Dzeko) caused him problems on more than one occasion, with Mattia Destro and Seydou Doumbia playing in the center of the attack and sometimes Francesco Totti as a fake striker.

Which was always the heavy weight of attempts to score on the wings.

Garcia’s contracts with Roma were a mixture of talents such as Sanabria, Adam Lialijic, Strutmann, Iturbi, then Mohamed Salah, Paredes and Rudiger after that, and experienced players such as Seydou Keita and Ashley Cole.

Once again a player who trained under Garcia talks about his ability to deal with his players, Salah said in an interview with French L’Equipe 2018: “I remember our first meeting well, he was very kind and friendly. His way of treating the players is exceptional. We haven’t worked together for a long time, but I have to thank him because he helped me a lot to feel good in the team I just arrived and I didn’t speak Italian”.

Garcia supervised the training of Roma in 118 matches, with 61 victories, 34 draws and 23 defeats. He scored 194 goals and conceded 126.

Back to France

Garcia returned to training in France again, this time with Marseille in October 2016.

Garcia started his mission by facing Paris Saint-Germain to draw with him and stop a series of 10 consecutive matches from defeat against the rivals.

The mix between experience and youth in winter deals directly again, Patrice Evra returns from Juventus and southern magician Dimitri Payet from West Ham with youngsters such as Morgan Sanson and Lucas Ocampos and succeeded in securing a place in the European League at the end of the season.

This was repeated after that with players such as Jordan Amafi and Clinton Nji, with some elements of experience such as Konstantinos Mitroglou, Adel Rami and Luis Gustavo.

Garcia reached the Europa League final in his second season Before losing to Atletico Madrid by three goals without a response, he finished fourth in the league.

Marseille finished the following season in fifth place and lost his chance to participate in Europe Garcia will leave at the end of the season.

Garcia supervised the training of Marseille in 142 matches, with 69 wins, 32 draws and 41 defeats. He scored 253 goals and conceded 192.

One last try

Garcia signed his coaching contracts to Lyon then in October 2019.

A domestic season did not end due to the Corona virus and Lyon was at the fifth place after 28 rounds.

In terms of the Champions League, Garcia achieved the surprise by eliminating Juventus and then Manchester City, but lost in the semi-finals to Bayern Munich by three.

the following season, Lyon was one of the contenders for the title until the last rounds But he finished the league in fourth place, seven points behind the champion Lil.

Lyon lost her time in the last round against Nice, to lose his chance to participate in the Champions League, and his relationship with the club ended at the end of the season.

Garcia came out in a press interview, after which he criticized the sporting director and one of the club’s legends, Juninho, which was attacked by the club’s fans.

Garcia supervised the training of Lyon in 78 matches, with 42 wins, 18 draws and 18 defeats. He scored 170 goals and conceded 107.

Marseille was the last team coached by Rudi Garcia and he left in May 2021.

his favorite way

Rudi Garcia’s playing methods varied between 4-3-3, 4-4-2, 4-2-3-1 and recently played with three defenders at some time with Marseille and more with Lyon in his last experiences.

It can be said that 4-3-3 with its derivatives is a plan that was his favorite in his early days until the end of the Roma experience – without neglecting the rest of the playing methods – before it became a mixture between it and 3-5-2 in Marseille and the new method overcame his style with Lyon.

Garcia says about his favorite style while at Roma: “I want my team to impose its style of play. It is always important to have the ball in order to attack and score goals without disturbing the balance on the field. Mental strength is the cornerstone of Roma with me, we fight every second for every inch of the field”.

In Rome, Wolves’ midfield was its strongest, with a 4-3-3 trio of De Rossi, Pjanic and Strutmann.

Something that was most prominent for Garcia in all his training stages, and it is not surprising for a player who spent his career playing as an attacking midfielder.

But the team suffered offensively in the absence of the outspoken striker before contracting with Dzeko, and with the wingers not scoring a large number of goals, Roma was suffering on the offensive side after a while, especially after the first season.

His last spell at Lyon was a huge breakthrough for a French team that played with a mixture of modern football and the power of classic football.

In attack, he relied at times on direct longitudinal passes, taking advantage of the speeds of his attackers and moving in the spaces behind the opponents’ defenses and at other times on possession and movements to empty spaces in the case of clusters.

The Lyon team with Garcia was always trying to create a numerical increase for itself, whether in the offensive or defensive situation, to avoid losing the ball easily offensively and to reduce the dangers defensively.

What about pressure? The Lyon team’s pressure was average under Garcia’s leadership, without exaggerating the progress or regression, as he did not give his opponent the opportunity most of the time to play direct longitudinal passes, which is the opposite of what happened 10 years before with Lille, who was most of his time adopting the high pressure method.

Pressure was causing some problems for Lille with Garcia, whether in the spaces behind the backs or the space between the midfield and defense, which he avoided with Lyon.

Finally, Garcia always asks the wingers to return to the defensive role with the midfielders and full-backs.