Champions League: From Caen to Roma via Lille, Rudi Garcia has beaten the odds and is ready for Bayern Munich
Roma boss Rudi Garcia is continuing to impress in the Italian capital but faces his toughest test yet against Bayern Munich in the Stadio Olimpico on Tuesday. Adam Bate profiles the French boss by tracing his steps back to an unlikely achievement as a midfielder with lowly Caen in 1989…
Tuesday 21 October 2014 03:39, UK
When Caen were promoted to the French top flight for the first time in their history in 1988, nobody gave them a chance. This was a league full of stars. A glance of the top scorers in Ligue 1 that season reveals the scale of the task: Papin, Hoddle, Weah, Blanc, Cantona and more.
Caen’s signings were rather low key by comparison. Rudi Garcia arrived from Lille to add composure to the midfield and alongside him there was Graham Rix, the former Arsenal man. “It was a big thing for the people of Normandy that they had Caen in the top league,” Rix told Sky Sports.
“After six games, for the first time ever in French football, we had no points. Not one single point after six games. Then there was just this dramatic turnaround. We started playing this pressing game and we survived. We won the last three games to stay up.”
Two goals down to Cantona’s Bordeaux in their final away game of the season, a Fabrice Divert hat-trick turned things around in sensational style. The never-say-die attitude of Robert Nouzaret’s men saw Rix liken Caen to their contemporaries at Wimbledon’s infamous Crazy Gang.
They ended up writing a book about that season – The Baptism of Fire - and the bonds that were forged that year remain. Divert has described the achievement as “phenomenal for this group of friends” while Rix feels it is significant that several of the protagonists have enjoyed success since.
“It was the best time of my life. Rudi Garcia was there and now manages Roma. Philippe Montanier went on to manage Real Sociedad and is now at Rennes and I’m still in regular contact with them both. It’s quite interesting that quite a few of them have gone on to quite big jobs in football.”
Read the full story of Graham Rix’s time at Caen in our Brits Abroad interview
It is tempting to believe that Garcia took inspiration from the events of that spring, although his sister Sandrine has suggested that his passion began far earlier. “I liked to watch him when he tried out his first tactics with a Subbuteo set,” she said last year. “He wasn't even 10 years old.”
There was certainly a sense of determination to his steady rise to prominence as a manager – securing a sports science degree and working as a television pundit, physiotherapist and scout before eventually embarking on his coaching career.
The Caen link was important in making that final step as it was his old boss Nouzaret who brought Garcia into the coaching set-up at St Etienne. Later roles at Dijon, where he won a promotion, and Le Mans where he guided them to a top 10 finish in Ligue 1 showed his potential before he was given the chance to coach Lille, the club for whom both he and his father had played.
His achievements there can hardly be overstated. Garcia took the club to their first title in 57 years, a league and cup double in fact, playing attacking football that was far removed from the more pragmatic style of his immediate predecessor Claude Puel.
He had quality players, of course. Eden Hazard was in wonderful form and Gervinho thrived but it was the balance he found in midfield with the likes of Rio Mavuba and Yohan Cabaye that suggested the hand of a skilled coach was at work.
With Paris Saint Germain’s continued investment and the numerous player sales to cope with, prolonged success was perhaps too much to expect – something Garcia had foreshadowed in the immediate aftermath of Lille’s title win. “They don’
