Christophe Urios had promised that he would decide before the end of the year. Finally, the Héraultais extends by two years his contract which binds him to the Union Bordeaux-Bègles. He will be at the head of the team until 2025. This Monday evening, the club announced it on its social networks and put an end to a suspense that has lasted for several weeks by the middle of the oval. Two and a half years after his arrival in Gironde, the Hérault manager decides to extend the adventure beyond his contract which was to end in 2023. A relief as the announcement of a departure could have weakened a brilliant group in the league. “Christophe is an essential man in our club project“, writes the president Laurent Marti in the press release of the club.
Waiting for a title
Even if his record is blank with Union Bordeaux-Bègles, his results are indisputable. No one had led the club to the semi-finals of the two European Cups (Champions and Challenge Cup), or even in Top 14 semi-final. He achieved this feat in the space of a year without ever being ridiculous since he was beaten, each time, by the winner of the competition (Toulouse for the Top 14 and the Champions Cup; the Bristol Bears for the Challenge Cup). If it emerges bitter from the elimination in the Champions Cup about the “blows of fate always in favor of Toulouse“and convinced that”the best team did not win“, Christophe Urios will end up admitting that this kind of experience makes a group progress.
He is like that, the manager of the UBB. It goes up quickly and then goes down again. Like a saucepan filled with milk that you would have forgotten on the stove and removed at the last moment. Who would have liked to be in the same room as him when he learned that the championship, of which the UBB firmly held the reins, was suspended and then stopped because of the Coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2020? A priori, not many people. Nevertheless, he digests defeat, then he transmits the substance of it to his players. Proof of this is: the Union is currently leader of the Top 14 and has partially rebalanced the debates with its pet peeve, the Stade Toulousain, by beating it at the beginning of the month.
Instill the win
As he writes in his book “Une saison en enfer”, published last November, Christophe Urios is looking for solutions to get out of it at the top. But also to evolve. “Am I able to continue to improve the club? Am I able to progress? I need that. If I feel that I will not progress and that I cannot move forward … “, he wondered after a period of media fasting last October. It seems difficult to measure the influence of its management but it is certain that its culture of winning has changed many meetings such as the victory on the lawn of Racing 92 at the end of November.
If he completes his contract, he will beat the record for the longevity of a manager at UBB
To instill a dynamic within a group, you must first make sure that your own machine is not jammed. This is one of the reasons that motivated his departure from Castres, where he won the Brennus, in 2019 : “I need to be really involved, at the heart of the matter. Otherwise I was bored and I had the impression that I was a little bored in Castres “, the former hooker explained this fall.
At the start of the season, he compared the evolution of his project to that of the making and designing a great wine. With the tasting as a high point, initially scheduled for 2023. If he went to the end of his contract, he would beat the longevity record for a manager since the Union Bordeaux-Bègles has existed. Christophe Urios, who also owns a wine estate near Carcassonne, wants to savor the fruits of his labor to the last drop.