While AS Nancy Lorraine go straight to relegation in National, and that the supporters demonstrated on Saturday February 5 their dissatisfaction with the management of the club by the current president, Gauthier Ganaye, the former boss Jacques Rousselot comes out of his silence. He agreed to give an interview to France Bleu Lorraine this Wednesday, February 9.
Jacques Rousselot, do you regret when you get up in the morning having sold AS Nancy Lorraine?
No, in my life, I don’t regret anything. I advance, I have always advanced. However, I still look in the rear view mirror from time to time. And unfortunately, it is clear that after selling the ASNL, I am very unhappy, very sad about the situation in which it is today. That’s why I’m coming out of the woodwork. To tell the supporters, the partners, the elected officials, that I am saddened in the same way, that I am very sad about what is happening today at the club. I really hope that we will get out of this and that even if we are on the verge of the National, that Albert Cartier will succeed with a stroke of force, a stroke of genius, that means that we have to win practically one match out of two . But why not? Why not? Because I think he’s the man for the job, even if he’s quite alone.
Do you understand some criticism from supporters who say that you sold the club to unserious people?
It wasn’t written on their foreheads that they weren’t very serious! They had a club in Nice, they sold it. They have three or four clubs elsewhere, so with a significant financial surface. When I received a certain number of potential buyers, I eliminated immediately when I felt that it was not very serious. But it seemed serious to me since once again, there are five major Sino-American shareholders and I thought they were going to breathe new life into the ASNL. That they were going to do better than me, that they were going to give much more strength and desire to find Ligue 1 quickly. However, it is clear that it is quite the opposite that happened, that is to say that they pulled the means down in various and varied fields. No investment, no follow-up. Today the boat is slowly sinking and that’s it and that makes me very sad. It’s heartbreaking, now we have to save the ASNL soldier.
Has your opinion changed since Gauthier Ganaye questioned your management of the club before he became president?
If I saw these declarations, indeed, it is a little what made me react as well and which made me come out of the wood when indeed, I sell the club. The club is 17th, of course, but with a team that was built by me by Jean-Louis Garcia and Eric Martin. And at the end of the season, we finished 8th, so I don’t think we were wrong about the squad. Then there are about fifteen players who left, about ten other players who arrived gradually until the end of August, with a coach who was unfamiliar with both the squad, who was unfamiliar with the language and who was no longer going green. And I think that’s where we had an ignition delay. It is my analysis and the experience of my 30 years that makes me react like that. And then, when I left the club on December 31, there were almost four million in cash in the coffers. So it’s still not bad for a football club that was supposedly adrift.
What is Gauthier Ganaye’s problem? His absence ? Or is it the fact that he wants to manage everything at once: chairing, training and recruiting?
I don’t want to put Gauthier Ganaye on trial. I was pissed off at his statements. But indeed, that’s what I’m told, that he is not present. So to run a business, you really have to be in it. You have to be close to the players, you have to be close to the collaborators. It should, but apparently it isn’t. It is clear that today, we are really in a rut in which it will be difficult to get out.
Unless you decide to take over the club?
I don’t know what the future will be made of and therefore I don’t know. But in any case, for the moment the club belongs to the Americans, led by Gauthier Ganaye. That’s all I can tell you.